A Downed Butterfly Poem by Peter Kane Dufault

Yet here it is. This is meant
and is no accident. (How
speak of ' design-by-
accident' and not stultify
English?) One can allow

being whacked by a windshield
in mid-hover and killed. That
is accident. But not this,
every index of artifice
in its mesmeric format,

and artifice far beyond
any we understand: Two
red-orange smouldering
discs on each dun wing
like planets, one in full view

the other occluded. — What
on earth do we make of it? I
already imagine things —
like harp-shaped shadowy wings
wide as the night sky

and rimmed in such blues
and ivories and rainbows, such
astronomies! — and that sure-
ly God looks a lot more
like this than like us.