Junk Yard Butterfly Revival
2-Sept-2011
I can laugh with you.
With you I’d laugh my
belly off in junk yards.
Kissing rusted car
parts, stitching up torn and forgotten ragdolls,
Tying together every
single foil gum wrappers we can find into a statue of the Eiffel tower.
We would laugh like children;
we would find beauty in the subtleties.
*
How funny it is that
that rusted blue bicycle and the limping red wagon found each other in this sea
of discarded life, this ocean of forgotten junk.
They lay there side
by side, immovable as mountains.
As the years go by
they seem to bend into a closer embrace.
Beneath this growing
heap of once cherished stories they sway into the soil.
Submitting to their
burden, they lay their lives in this path, holding down the earth that
threatens to swallow them, and holding up this collection of unlikely junk,
This heap of wayward
loved ones, these lonely toaster, voiceless radios and sole less rubber boots.
*
And yes, we’d be
laughing, because what sweet subtleties they are.
They are not lifeless;
their wheels spin in infinity,
That bicycle rings its
crocus bell until her rosy wagon cheeks are tulips.
They whistle
lullabies into busted radio speakers and use toasters to make gum wrapper
waffles which they slide into the heels of all the rubber boots.
*
And look at these
butterflies, these fleeting angels.
They heed not their
frailties.
Their eyes see only
flowers in this desert landfill.
They know nothing of
rusty joints and flat tires,
of burnt fuses, muddy
puddles, short circuits and busted speakers drums.
But they speak fluent
flowers and their wings tips swish to the ebb and flow of sea tides.
They are tender
gardeners, generous.
Fully giving of their
fragile frames, they carry mounds of pollen on their head tops,
And weave spider webs
around watering cans,
Lifting them in
unity, they quench the thirst of this flowering junk yard.
Giving life to
beautiful subtleties, to love stories between wagons and bicycles, who carry
mountains of adopted grandchildren on their backs.
*
We are cradled by
them, these rapturous butterflies.
I am weightless in
their tiny insect angle arms.
See me now; I am
wholly rusted before you, laughing my belly off.
I am suspended
between them in a spider web stretcher attached to my creaking shattered spine
handle.
I am craning; being
tilted into this, pouring forth what is not mine but is flowing through me.
Emptied of poisoning
self and filled from the Invisible Source,
This is a vessel of
sweet waters, a holy watering can, a clear channel, laughing its belly off.
