In the prairie,
cabbage whites float
like snow in a shaken globe.
One sticks to a coneflower,
one rustles a ribbon of others
to a plot of brown-eyed Susans
as if there were a plan.
But it’s a free-for-all they live for,
spiraling in twos and threes
over the lawless grass.
They, the flaking paint of chaos
whose slightest brush
alters cosmos, clover, phlox.
I want to say slow down, you’ll spend
yourselves too soon, but there’s no stopping
the fluttering pulse (they don’t have long).
No wonder it’s a light life, the life
of traveling light. They touch
only a few things and there drink deep.
Copyright 2009. Angela Just. All rights reserved.