I Dreamt I Was a Butterfly
I am a thousand years old,
Thousands of thousands,
And here, tonight I awoke from a dream
Where I was a butterfly
In my dream I saw an old man
And I heard an old woman
Talking of my beauty, my freedom
I let them come near me in the garden
I spoke to them while I stayed for a long time
They did not hear me as I told them
This happiness you feel seeing me
This is the good left in your diminished world
I flew to their planted flowers, what else could I do –
I want to remind them of what joy is
And this old man and this old woman sat
On their old chairs, and they held hands
I landed on the old woman’s knee, and she laughed
I landed on the back of the old man’s hand
They sat still
And they remembered the Universe.
CK Munsell © August 5, 2024
Monarch
As a butterfly,
I never imagined the world
I lived in.
It was always there
Manifest before me.
I could trust what I saw;
What I sensed;
What I felt.
But as I dream,
I become a man.
A king.
And I do not know
If anyone
tells me the truth.
What lies ahead are pitfalls.
The decision before me
Is set:
Do I remain a king
Or flutter away?
Strange Attractor
Two wings a'flutter
And then half a world away
Tornados kill us
A million wings now
Are recursively in play
Worlds connect this way
People I don't know
Flap their busy lives at me
Across my planet
Butterflies affect
Much more than breeze or waft
They come affecting me
Across the dateline
Sorties of variables
I am defenseless
Come what may today
Targeted me yesterday
Look! I've wings myself
What you did before
Provokes what I do today
In vicious circles
I Am A Butterfly
Or at least, that's what I am intended to become.
I am stuck in my chrysalis,
Struggling to adjust to the drastic transformation
From larva to adult.
I've shed my skin multiple times before,
Changed myself after feasting on the experiences that each person has given me.
The sweet flavor of oak, the bitter taste of milkweed;
I devoured them all, making them a part of me.
But maybe I bit off more than I can chew,
Maybe I forced myself to grow faster than I should have.
Because now I am trapped in a shell of my own weaving,
Where danger surrounds me as the world as I knew it dissolves.
Untapped potential, I am being reconstructed into something new,
Something beautiful.
That is what I must convince myself as I rip my body to shreds,
Agonizing, searing pain penetrating through cold numbness.
Repressed memories and emotions surge beneath the dark surface,
Each one a battle to put to rest, to accept and move forward
Past the haunting traumas that try to drag me down,
To keep me stuck in this hell forever.
But I was made for more than this;
I was made to fly freely in the sky, unburdened by the weight of the world,
To dance with the currents, graceful with purpose.
These wings are not developed yet;
It'll take a lot of time and effort to push through the barrier.
But I dream of the day I'll become a butterfly,
Where the horrors of my childhood are little more than a passing nightmare,
A mirage disrupted with a flap of wings that guide me towards a brighter future.
I Sang in Eulogies
The way
we trek
the plank, the body
to which wings attach
a breeze over, passed through
and we held that, as Life
a rosehip
bubbling water
and called it This
the It
the walk, paused
along the body, plank
latched to miracles
honeycomb
by which we'd fly
with our hands
You wrote
and I sang, steamed
with feet that grew
in distance from the ground
red as eyes closed,
Close to the light.