a monarch hanging

from its chrysalis—sunrise

under a live oak

 

warm sunshine

a spring azure opens

its crinkled wings

 

mom’s daylily beds

a fiery skipper

zigzagging

 

sunrays through trees

cabbage whites dancing

everywhere

 

quiet garden

a dead leaf lands

on a green dahlia 

 

evening sky

full of owl butterflies’

eyespot wings

 

nightfall

a black swallowtail

closing its wings

 

reading Zhuangzi—

each word a butterfly

ready to flap

​