Playing Now: Butterflies and New Romantic Musical
A most wonderful thing, natural observation
Copulating on the wing, butterflies on mission
Mostly pure white on this summer day –welcome cool -
Like delicious Autumn, but breaking the rule
Of long hot summers on the Eastern Cape
Mostly white butterflies after the rains; none escape
Being pursued. I’ve seen singles dart into the bush
Made by a clump of Mulberry saplings, win mate or friend
The shady vale next my window is a love-ly battleground!
Uncoupled after one mating as with birds against sky
Those single white missiles shoot faster and high
To locate another unhitched butterfly. And how! Threesomes are found
But not for long – two seem to enter the smallest circle
Until Number Three has to leave, shooting off like missile …
Until the most special sight, a string of couples closely
Crisscrossing the spaces among the trees like confetti
(Two insects - smaller, yellower - dance closer to the ground
Just to remind us, earth has other lives in reproduction)
I see the whites circle and circle in addictive lovemaking
Often alighting on branches of the neem (we call slingeberry) trees
O how wonderful, beautiful, they render this youthful afternoon
As if twilight has come: “NEW ROMANTIC MUSICAL starting SOON”
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