[Untitled 4]

At church, in stained glass:
white and gray clouds, blue sky,
an orange-brown butterfly
with perfect veins.

The pastor approaches the
inevitable subject. "Shit,"
mutters my neighbor,
stereotypical in her polyester
pants, her orange-white old lady hair.

I feel the ember dread of hell
upon me, of late --
the objective horror of it,
the hot breath like the sulfur's
last sensation before the mower's
searing of tattered wings,
smashing of gently fuzzed body.

These are things we try
not to think about -- like butterflies,
symbols of new life which never live
for long, like all the little frogs
we unwittingly squeezed to death
as small children at the water's edge.

Are You cruel? I ask. Well, are You?
Are You? the scales loosening
from wings of faith, the wings wilting
in gray gravel and dust.

But somewhere, still, I trust.
I am following the monarch memory
through generations of my own faith.