The Red Admiral
A sadness alien to summertime
Winds slowly along the road
To the bed where you breathed your last
Opposite the blue sky is the grey tarmac
Where my head lilts to remember
And suddenly a butterfly emerges from a hedge
Like the one in your garden forty years ago
Which you told me was named
A Red Admiral
One of nature’s magic acts
But we take them almost for granted
Because we are used to them
Imagine seeing it for the first time in a distant land.
To be known, is to lose mystery
As the Butterfly loses its,
To the tainted eye.
How could it forget you?
You were as much a mark of this world
As the birds and the clouds and the trees
And the moon, sailing softly,
Remembers them all
