BLACK BUTTERFLY

 POETRY, PROSE AND PAINTINGS

                 Jonah

                 You left us in Winter

                  when snow covered the ground

                  and I could trace your foot prints there

                  through the yard, across the field

                  to the wall where, in Sunny times you lay.

                  I found you curled around yourself,

                  a heap of Autum's leaves close pressed

                  against the cold grey stone,

                  in the long sugar coated frozen grass.

                  Your amber eyes closed in eternal sleep.

                  And though I willed with all my heart

                  that you might stretch awake,

                  pad at the hard ground,

                  yawn and take a sweet, long drink of Winter's air,

                  you lay as I had found you.

                  I bent and took

                  your stiff cold form in to my arms.

                  I stroked your head once more

                  and carried you from the still falling snow

                  to the dark, warm barn.

                  One hot June day

                  six thousand days ago,

                  we breached this world together, you and I,

                  and grew together, learned our different lessons

                  and played, though you grew old too fast.

                  Now here in the warm dark,

                  where Spring's kittens learn

                  to play their life games among the Summer scented hay,

                  I watch a moment as you dream the endless dream

                  of death's long lasting night.

                  I do not cry

                  I wrap you in a blanket,

                  take out the spade to cut a portal in the iron hard ground:

                  there by the Willow tree, your favourite place

                  when Summer sun baked your coat of faded marmalaid.

                  And so it's done

                  a fresh dug patch of darkness,

                  a mound of earth and stones and bits of green

                  that blends and melts in to the white, white snow.

                  I do not need to mark you with a stone.

                  For I will know

                  where rest your weary bones

                  and I will see within imagination's eye

                  a lithe sleek form that shakes the grass

                  as it breaths and purrs and yawns awake.