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
