Fluttering in from the horizon,
Wing on wing, from the Spring of time,
They come, a gossamer horde
Semaphoring in the endless day,
They meet, mate, and provide
Provender for their young,
And then they die.
But now from this
Another wave is generated to move on.
What then? Well, they believe
That crumpling one brood on another brood,
An infinity of butterflies will coax
An archibutterfly to come,
And lead them from a world of birds and wasps,
And other accomplices of woe
To where the whole taxonomy will bask,
Subjected to eternal shine,
And all the vacuum of the past,
The hurried haste, the glut of spawn
Is justified.
So what are we to say?
Well, birds and butterflies and men
Form an economy of souls
At whom we laugh at our own peril;
And the winged hieroglyphs
Provide a puzzle which
Our whole life is too short to puzzle on.
So here we end, all tantalized
At the solution of the butterflies.
Roger Fogelman was born in New York City in 1940. From an early age, he wrote poetry and for the next 45 odd years, he has continued to produce poems on various subjects, such as nature and the human condition. He won the Morrison Poetry Prize at Cornell University and the American Academy of Poets Award at the University of Virginia. His work has been published in the American Academy of Poets' Commemorative Volume, 1965; the Cornell Writer; and the Nassau Review. Dr. Fogelman graduated from Cornell University in 1960 and received an MA and PhD in English from the University of Virginia. He also holds an MS in TESL from Queens College. He currently resides in New York City.
