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