BARBARA F. LEFCOWITZ
'BUTTERFLY SAPPHIC'

my mother loved butterflies, especially
set in rubies and sapphires, a gold clasp
so their wings would hover in the shawl's fringe
above her cleavage.

not just for their stained-glass colors, delicate
webs of thin lines: I suspect she was intrigued
by their living proof that transforming oneself
was not impossible.

did she know about the scales on the membranes
of their wings, how they could disappear like dust
at the slightest touch, obliterating all
iridescent hints

of color and light; about the uncertain
journey from egg to larva to chrysalis
before the final emergence, wings upright
like a paper fan

prior to spreading? Harbingers of good luck
in China, caught, prized, and pressed under glass
all over the world, still some confuse them with
ordinary moths

despite the latter's nocturnal preferences
their dullness of hue and antennae that
sprawl like matted feathers. About my birth she
spoke only of pain

most likely expecting I'd emerge from her
simultaneously brilliant and ugly
as one of those moths that one sweeps away from
the lightbulb it seeks

never bothering to note its intricate
patterns, the subtle shifts in its pallette of
greens and grays, its knack for survival despite
its voracious lust

for attacking innocent sweaters and leaves,
how the cocoon of the silkworm moth yields
the first raw strands, how the eyes on the luna
moth's wings never shut.