Autumn is full of butterflies. Or so it seems to me.
Sometimes, as in the picture at the top of the post, it is only the visual echo of a butterfly. Sometimes, as in this fragment, it’s a memory of summer:
From among the fallen leaves, the wind
lifts a broken butterfly wing
and gives it flight.
I said yesterday that there still seemed to be a fair number of flowers around considering it’s now officially autumn. So today I went out to see if I could find something more seasonal to feature on the blog.
Hips and haws, blackberries, elderberries, snowberries, cotoneaster, yew and rowan… I went round gathering fruit from other people’s gardens and along the canal path – or at least gathering photos.
Continue reading “autumn berries”
The previous post was a bit of a political ramble and was nowhere near as popular as other recent ones that feature pretty photos and fragments of poetry, so let’s try again.
I never collected butterflies as a child, never owned a killing jar, never pinned spread wings flat on boards or boasted of my trophies to visitors. I did, however, own a butterfly net made from a piece of net curtain, a hoop of wire and a bamboo garden cane – well, maybe my brother owned it and I acquired it – which features in the poem Childhood posted last autumn.
I could also identify just about every adult butterfly in the book, though I was less expert when it came to caterpillars.
The final lines of the poem Childhood are:
The butterflies have flown away;
their colours paint my dreams.
I’m wondering now if in fact it is moths like this that add that dash of dream colour.
For years I have been sure that there’s a poem in the woodshed. Today, I seem to have found another fragment:
don't confuse the narrator 