BLACK BUTTERFLIES

BLACK BUTTERFLIES is a hand printed lino-cut with water color gouache added afterwards along with oil pastel.  It is named after a poem by the artist that is a free option if customer so desires.

BLACK BUTTERFLIES

During the afternoon heat, during the absent monsoon, during the dog days of August, most pollinators sleep.

Only the small black butterflies with three tiny white eyes on the pelt-like wing, continue feeding.

Actually, like many black creatures, they are only black from a distance. Up close they are otter brown, and so velvet, I want to pet them.

I am grateful for their constant companionship in a world where nothing is constant. Even a loyal, lifelong friend will die one day, leaving me with the one companion that never deserts—fragility.

But the black butterflies are fragile, aren’t they? They can be plucked out of the air by a hungry cousin, or ripped by a summer storm, or poisoned by car exhaust. Can’t they?

And the thin, crisp air of autumn nights will freeze them in their sleep, if their timed obscelecence has not already slowed them down to the final stillness.

For now, they look happy. Some dream with folded wings on the yellow petunias. Some perch with their wings wide open, as if awaiting the next sexy call to flight and nectar.

I know it is not good poetry to state the obvious, but the small black butterflies—they give me hope.