Butterfly Hands

In the middle years of translucency,

The Golden Age, it turned Amber.

At eight I was a forager,

And an astronaut at nine.

At ten she laid her head upon my chest,

On the crumby shore of the lakeside, heaving.

Feeling, not hearing, my virgin breathing.

Like a disbelieving gasp of freedom,

Upon exiting the womb,

I asked her to stick around awhile,

But the circus was passing through.

She fled home to mother,

And so did I, to mine,

And asked my mother to take me,

Where the colors are plenty

But forge not a pair,

Where the air is heavy with the scent of opacity,

Where, though Others lurk,

A festival waits with feasting flesh,

Where the brows furrow

In spite of distant, forgotten wonder,

Where salty rivers flow briskly

Through spurred hourglass sands,

Where my love would be waiting

Extending butterfly hands.

I asked my mother of the circus tents,

Why the red and white streaks never meet.

She told me that pink was a gutter color,

The product of the wanton, of a surrogate mother.

And I was no sinner,

And sin was not me.

So the harmony of stripes went undisturbed,

And no one stabbed the water with twigs,

Nor skipped rocks across the shallows,

So the water went perverted and formed parasites

In the depths that hid the murky gallows.

Great elephants paraded like feeble court jesters,

The carnies’ cackles clanged like wedding bells,

And lions resisted the urge to clamp their jaws,

Lutes dazzled spectators with pentatonic scales,

While the audience yawned at the acrobatic law,

The crowd threw treats, that now had gone stale,

And so went up in flames, the red and white draws.

Tomorrow I am eleven,

And the next I am twelve,

And her love hits my head

More like the fire bell.

And not so much hatred, not so much the end,

I fear now love — the acquaintance, not friend.