Following on from last week’s tale of an accidental butterfly catcher, this week our narrator takes a butterfly for its dinner, and chances to rhyme a lot as it taunts its prey. In this poem, I ask you to think about what it might mean to hunt something that resembles the better part of yourself and the ways in which beauty might play a part in this.
I talk to this winged-alien because it troubles me.
it flies, it drinks and lands upon a tree.
I tell it that I am the child-catcher from forgotten fantasy
that I steal dreams and communicate them outlandishly.
A spider provoketh beauty quicker than thieves.
And yet, we are in the forest enclosed by leaves.
(Now: attention I hear you stir
your feverish wings start to spur)
‘But I am the most beautiful of things,
my patterns leap and bound in the wind
sewing a tapestry of secrets and kings,
that hover beautifully above these water springs’
