[ Back to Diane's page ]
Unlikely
as it seems, the tiny air currents that a
butterfly creates travel across thousands of miles,
jostling other breezes as they go and eventually changing the weather.
—Edward Lorenz, meteorologist, M.I.T.
An
untidy spring is bursting on our backyard hill,
landscaped ad hoc by the combination
of what was already there and what we could afford:
white Douglas iris, wet, feathered,
foxglove, hairy with promise, crowding the candy-striped azalea,
poppy volunteers. Again and again I go to the window.
The mockingbird’s come back.
There is never any money; it’s a given, like seasons,
like snails that hide under the calla leaf
when the sun is hot. There is damage
to show for it. Now the clutch, the fifth
on the eleven-year-old VW that labors up the hill, is shot.
Do we fix it? A thousand bucks--
the tires too are bald--or find a way
to buy another car? Do we buy one
and give up going to the mountains?
The snapdragons I cut back in November reincarnate
in a mix of pinks and creams,
and your cymbidium, the one bought dormant, cheap,
has spikes flagged with buds.
We wonder over this birth, know its name,
Buxom Lass, but not its outcome.
The job you think I should take would pay for the car,
another just-for-now, just-until-something-better--
like the Jetta, I’m good money after bad--
nothing sticks.
My mind floats on surfaces,
like Ophelia, drowned, drifting.
We planted columbine above
the grave of our son’s hamster,
a way of teaching him and us nothing
just ends. We try this
and that. Somewhere, butterflies
are changing the weather.
First published in ZYZZYVA. Copyright © Diane K. Martin
[ Back to Diane's page ]