Poetry by Melanie Faith
if I wrote it you might
not believe me, but I’ll
write it anyway.
For a second, I mistook
riffs of an electric guitar
on the radio
of a passing car
for a stray cat or kitten
and looked up
from my book
for a tail and a lean cat needing care.
The breeze held ice and calm
and September hope in it,
though still plenty of August
in the sun, in the hot pink
of potted deck geraniums. It wasn’t
the velvety electric blue,
nor the soft ebony
of a dress, nor the yellow almost green
said to bring happiness,
but it did: the root-beer brown butterfly
with buff and dun and a patch of white
like a paintbrush smudge
on its one wing, as if made with
too-wide bristles and wrong for the job—
with flowers not a foot away, he landed
on my right kneecap
of my soft green velour pants—even when
I moved just slightly and uncrossed
my crossed legs, he kept his perch
astride my kneecap. Antennae, black
buggy eyes scanning sideways
as I studied him
wings at rest, he stayed at rest on me.
It is no small thing to be chosen
by a child or a gown person as a confidant,
as a particularly close friend, is no small thing.
To breathe out, to breathe in
watching a brown butterfly
with a white smudge like perfectly imperfect
paint and the music floating over and
the morning radio as a song ends,
another song begins. Was it five minutes
or twenty or a touch of eternity
until the butterfly
lifts up and away again?
Melanie Faith is a poet, writer, educator, photographer, and frequent doodler. Learn more at melaniedfaith.com. Her craft books for authors through Vine Leaves Press offer tips on numerous genres. Her latest poetry collection, Does It Look Like Her?, follows Alix, a forty-something artist and the famous painting of her.
