Here is a butterfly wing,
a scrap like the fabric of a rainbow,
more delicate than a baby’s
scalp, this wing caught
on the tip of the pasture grass.
Here is color come to join
the green of the field,
a gift we hadn’t dreamed.
Wind lifts it like a sigh,
gentles it again to its bed
of stems and leaves where
it will drift like thistle
seeds, settle like sunlight,
where it will fade and blend,
where morning dew will jewel
it and night will cover it,
where another day will whisper
of all that comes and goes.
Connie Jordan Green lives on a farm in East Tennessee and writes a newspaper column, poetry, and novels. Her poetry has appeared in numerous publications. She has two chapbooks, Slow Children Playing and Regret Comes to Tea, and a collection, Household Inventory, winner of the Brick Road Poetry Press Award.