jhameia: ME! (Writing in my Blood)
jhameia ([personal profile] jhameia) wrote2006-08-09 12:52 pm
Entry tags:

Poetry: Butterflies

Title: Butterflies
Genre: nature poetry, personification
Theme: nature, transcience
Comments: I was thinking about butterflies one day for some reason, and remembered a scene in Guardians of the West in the Mallorean, where Ce'Nedra is in the lake, and her face is upturned and a butterfly flies over her face. Then I thought about this documentary about butterflies, and after the major fest of coming out the cocoon, drinking a lot of flower stuff, flying around like crazy, and fucking, butterflies die. Well, the males do, the females will die after laying the eggs. Sometimes a female will barely be out of the cocoon and still drying out her wings when a male comes to mate with her. Like, she's just there minding her own business, and this butterfly comes by, unfs her a few times, and leaves. And after their little life-cycle is done, they just drop down, stagger, and die. Saw it on TV, like, so many butterflies on te ground flopping or laying dead. I found that kinda crazy.

There were a lot of problems with this, mostly to do with the uneven rhyme scheme. I'd also been reading some Oscar Wilde prior, so his language is in there, too.


Two butterflies, newly free
of their cocoons left on
a mulberry tree,
danced with impunity.
'Round and 'round and 'round,
they flew,
sidetracked easily
as the wind blew.
At length, Mssr. Butterfly
came to where I sat,
coaxed me to lie
down upon my back.
So I did, asking,
"Will your ladylove not mind?"
"Indeed, she is fickle;
she needs have time
to consort with flowers.
I shall await her
change of heart."
He hovered over my lips,
just a heartbeat apart
for a moment,
then flitted up high.
"Now we must part!
Good bye! good bye!"
Drunk on nectar and altitude,
so they danced again.
I watched them:
they were pretty to the eye,
but my heart broke in vain.

For scarce do butterflies mate
do they fall down dead.

[identity profile] fayenatic.livejournal.com 2006-08-09 04:13 pm (UTC)(link)
What a wonderful poem! :D

But a bit sombre too as its just how it is for the butterfly world. Propagate and then die.