Yellow Butterflies

To make ready for the light brittleness of autumn,
The vast and passionate September sky,
The snail on the fallen ribbed leaf,
Long dusks celebrated by leaf fires:
Yellow butterflies fly their lives out,
Flying about and about,
Staying to cling to grass
To digest their eaten sunlight,
To convert it by elfin chemistry
Into yellowness and flying,
Or, staying to breathe on the top wire of a fence
To be seen by a child
To cause him to wonder at yellowness and flying.

Yellow  butterflies
Shift from ray to delicious ray
Not knowing the tilt, the angle, of their filmy wings
Eager to slip it painlessly
Into the ripe mouths of summer plants.

___________

James Bolner, Sr.
Baton Rouge, LA

Copyright ©1955 James Bolner, Sr.