Butterfly
A butterfly
brushes against
my mother’s rose bush.
Pale and delicate,
much too frail to survive,
in this April wind,
he tears his wing
on a thorn.
The white of its shredding:
a sudden shriek,
blanched blood
drifting like snow.
“Why did you write those words?”
My mother’s voice
sounds in my head.
“Am I the butterfly?
Are you the echo of my cry?”
From this distance in time,
my mind bounces back and forth,
from image to image:
a stone skipped across
tranquil water.
Pictures pound through my head:
waves on the shoreline
where I scattered her ashes,
and every grain of sand
a grinding of small bones.
rogermoorepoet 
So movingly expressed, the thoughts occasioned by your image of the wounded butterfly. True poetry.
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Thanks, Roland, for the comment and the visit.
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Dear moor!!you are most emotional and your emotions always inspire others.
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Thank you so much, Aruna. As poets, we reach out across the world, always trying to reach other poets. Thank you so much.
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True.dear moor.
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“Am i a butterfly;are you an echo of my cry….”most painful bt beautiful as a lovely memory.dear roger !!all women are in defferent role always like butterfly.
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Am I a man dreaming I am a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming I am a man? The very thought makes nonsense of the powers we try to exert, one over the other.
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Dear moor!! I think -dis poem is related to ur lovely mother’s memories.
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This is beautiful and yet a bit chilling as well Roger.
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Like facing the death squad and asking for a cigarette~
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Well we all have a self image in our head of what we think we are like…I only said I would like to act like that…absolutely no guarantee that I wouldn’t break down.
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We will never know, not until the time comes … and may it never come, Mr. Cake, may it never come.
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This is beautiful, Roger! I love the mother’s voice that echoes through it…bittersweet.
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Thanks, Tanya. I have a folder of these poems and have decided to revisit them. This is the first. I have so much work hidden away and awaiting re-discovery.
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That is exciting! I loved this one.
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Beautiful!
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Thank you. It’s a golden oldie revised and rewritten this morning.
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Very nice!
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