Repose
October meets butterflies’
linger in their tortoiseshell design
familiar by the hundreds
alongside spring water
near the trail on which I’m walking, as if
they rest after earlier spring’s call,
annual migration to mate
toward the laying down of eggs
in tobacco brush, snow brush, hidden.
It won’t be long before they’ll hibernate,
leave for lower elevation.
They have their patterns.
Open and close,
open and close.
Their wings convey a sign
before lifting off again
toward rivers of fluttering skies.
Lynne Goldsmith is an award-winning poet who has been published in All-Creatures.Org,