Sunday, August 29, 2021

As We Build

Two dime-sized yellow-green butterflies
copulate on a pine board we
nailed at an angle to brace a partition. 

They're connected like duelists
about to pace: one board's edge,
the other perpendicular on the broader

plane. Their antennae do not so much
as twitch: wings rigid as steel, eyes
like polished obsidian pebbles, placidly

glazed. Amid slamming hammer blows,
electric saw scream, and sawdust storm,
they're lost in the depth and breadth 

of regeneration. As we raise another wall,
it's sap-wet ribs seem to bless with shadows
in a geometric pattern these two insects

abstracted in their act and moment. Around
us: loafs of Sierra Nevada mountains,
dark green with pines and firs. Canyon air

is thick with cicadas, dragonflies, bees, gnats,
and other bugs--corpuscles of energy whose
names I'll never know. Swollen knuckles

of thunderhead fists crowd an eastern sky.
There's a humid, thick, barely audible humming
of summer's abundance, of bright boulders

ringing with heat, a hum of hot southern air,
of soaked clouds about to blow up. Hammering
stops, saw stops: we break for water. The 

procreating butterflies relax. Their four 
antennae shift slightly as if nudged by breath
of a whisper. They shake the drowse 

of loving death from their rejuvenated
wings, rise and fly and depart this half-framed
human dwelling, and they join the inflamed air. 


circa 1981/2021 hans ostrom

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