The death of a butterfly

 

A grounded butterfly

on the mossy brick floor,--

A flickering, flapping life

completing its last worldly chore,

A sad sight,

so many others flutter with delight,

suckling flowery smiles and nectar sweet,

Aha, life on full feisty treat,

And the sad, sick dying butterfly

with its wings shut tight,

jutted, sticking like one wing,

The air gone with the space between them,

A closing, a conclusion,

a finish to the chapter,

a final drop of anchor,

Just life enough to hold them tight and straight,

and a little movement of legs

to convince the gathering ants

that it’s something alive,

imploring them to respect

the death bed’s sad sanctity.

 

A silent, slow parting from the world

in a rain-soaked mossy corner

in this big world full of

big-time meetings, unions and laughter,

She is deathbed, grave, cremation

right there in the centre of

throbbing life, raucous laughter and living.

 

Life still holding

like the vertical sail of a lost boat,

The ants sensing the death

which is their food,

But it has enough kick in its legs

to shake them off and move

for a little jog of life,

another tiny sip of survival.

 

The day progresses,

Time crawls slowly,

There is now a tilt in its

vertical lime-green sails,

With a slanted sail it moves,--

Brave butterfly,

If you can’t fly,

you should crawl,

Moving with shut-down slanted wings

is also the hallmark of life,

It shows that once you flew high,

The yard is now

an unknown grounded reality,

One more tiny step,

One more little sip of life.

 

It needs a flowery coffin, I think,

I hold the shut down wings

to take it to a cozy flowery corner

where it can die in peace,

But there is enough force in its wings

to give a tangible pull

to the fingers of a pitying poet,

It flutters to the core of its life reserves,

It denies the captivity even

in its last moments,

As I try to put it among the petals

of a lovely flower in a safe corner,

It denies the possibility of make-believe comfort,

It’s brave; it loves its freedom,

It’s even wiser than me,

Shakes to deny my denial of death,

It flaps vigorously, as if shouting,

‘Let me be open and honest with my death

on the same old open, raw stage of life!’

It’s no longer interested in flowers,

It has dropped its cravings for petals and nectar,

That was then, and now is now,

With marvelous detachment

it uses her last ounce of strength,

swings and swirls and flops out of

the rosy bed I prepared,

‘Flowers are for life;

ground is for death!’ it seems to shout,

She makes this bold statement

with the last air in her wings,

almost gets airborne again

but lands on ground after

a few feet of painful, struggling flight,

It lands on the eternal bed of eternal sleep,--

mother earth,

It looks at me with a rebuke,

‘What do flowers matter now?

They were for the time when there

was air and desire in the wings!’

And there she stands on the ground again,

strong, defiant, her sails vertical again,

The antennae on alert

like a lacerated soldier still holding his sword

to parry off the last strokes of enemy swords,

Her legs dancing to accidental

bumps of the rushing ants,

Tightly holding the fort of life,

Seems to tell me,

‘Give as much as you can,

as long as it’s possible!’

 

She faces the end with dignity,

with calm deliberation,

with full alertness,

using all that is still left to her

to defend her identity of a butterfly,

And she does that with honor,

If not with flying colors

but with brave, straight sail

for almost four hours,

Then the vertical sail tipped over,

Her little ounce of consciousness

sought a way out,

The closed wings opened

Like the fists opening to open palms

of a human dying and turning to a corpse,

She welcomed the skies

with open wings

and flew to subtler dimensions.

 

She is now a toy for the wind to play with

and food for the ants to enjoy,

Her colorful corpse flutters

and is dragged playfully by the wind,

The ants pursue the lemon-green food,

Its wings chipped like a a cake getting cut,

Happy ants carry home the mementos of victory.

 

The butterfly is now air, sun, wind, sky

and water, fire, earth in the ants,

The little show of death on the ground,

The show of life in full abloom

among crimson clusters of peregrina flowers,

The corpse disintegrates on the ground,

While her sisters dance on the petals,

They suck nectar from flowers’ lips,

They flutter and play among leaves,

Dozens of them giving the best

a butterfly can give

in beauty, smiles, nectar and pollination,

Then silently one of them

comes aground like this one,

Floats like a dry, dead leaf

and gently touches the ground for eternal rest,

The show of many lives and smiles

and some deaths and tears,

Among happy flowers, waving leaves, floating clouds,

All under the eternal muse of that

who lives and dies side by side.