Yellow Butterflies by Richard Weaver

Newly hatched and glistening after birth,
what brings them to lend themselves
to this landscape where I’m living?
This narrow path that bends and bends,
leading me like a gypsy’s heart, straight
from the house where I no longer hang my hat?
Like thoughts they turn in the wind.
Their singular wings catching the light
that suspends them between this world
and the next. Servants of the sun,
they dance on the heads of flowers,
part cloud, part rain, or catapult into the mind
of those who won’t be caught and those like me
who have turned away from life on land.



Richard Weaver lives in Baltimore City where he volunteers with the Maryland Book Bank, CityLit, the Baltimore Book Festival, and is the writer-in-residence at the James Joyce Pub. He is the author of The Stars Undone (Duende Press). Five poems from this MS became the libretto for a symphony, Of Sea and Stars, 2005, performed four times to date.