Tags
Butterflies, Butterfly, Children, Columbia River, Danger, Lake Roosevelt, Life, mud swallows, Poem, Poems, Poetry, Spirit, Spirits, Spokane, Young Spirits
First, he landed on a towel,
Then a table, then the inside
of the black bimini.
A lost soul,
Untethered of trees,
And grass, and flowers,
Trying to measure
His new safe place,
A break from the big, blue nothing
He’d somehow made
His way across—
To us.
I know enough about spirits, I said,
To think this might be—
Spirit,
as fragile as a butterfly’s wings,
As frail as its wings beating,
Fighting, against the current
of a wind made stronger
Over the swelling crests
Of the Columbia River.
Where, in his journey,
Did he go so wrong,
That he wandered so far,
between safe shores,
I thought,
as the boat rocked,
Water slapping gently
Against the hollow pontoons.
Many times, the butterfly
Flew from the boat,
Only to return overwhelmed
By the vastness of the river—
The river, an ocean—
The river, the world—
The river, the end of our universe.
The insurmountable river.
