flutterbys

summer heat
the painted lady drinks
from my palm

 

the wink
of a tiny blue butterfly —
yellow grass

 

one hundred and twenty kilometres per hour — white  butterflies

 

thorn-bush
a spine divides
into a butterfly

 

wanderer
for so long on the old stump
wings filling

 

into the air!
the butterfly’s
first flight

 

When we were bringing up a foundling magpie a few years back, we were outside a lot and studying magpies. We (as surrogate parents) and the other magpie parents in the vicinity, were really pleased that in spring, when you need them most, butterflies are caterpillars: legless, wingless and slow! They grow at the same rate as the beak of the bird.

Ain’t Nature grand?

Carpe Diem #498, butterfly

When I was a child learning to talk, I used to call butterflies ‘flutterbys’.