:: Butterfly Grounded ::

I submit the following with more than a little trepidation, for this poem was meant for a once-love, and not the woman I married. Still, it embodies something universal enough that I still regard it as relevant for those in the same situation as I had been.

She was in Belgium for a year and a half. Still, the tensile strength of love was never tested by leaving Cupid's bow unstrung. I took a semester of French while she was away. I wrote her weekly, sometimes twice. We had only been on two dates before she left, but I felt like her being away did more to strengthen what I felt for her than diminish it. Alas, it did not last. Belgium was so far away, and my eyes and arms forgot her, and all my heart remembered was a fable; a love story to tell myself at night. Several months before she returned I met another girl and soon I stopped writing altogether.

Then one day Belgium showed up at my door. It took only until the end of a longish walk to see that we would not have made it even if this other girl were not in the picture. Our priorities were too different by then; our experiences ~ and therefore our beliefs ~ were too different...too nostalgic, as it were.

The irony of all of this is that the girl I met lived in Minnesota. I traded writing-letters-half-way-across-the-world for driving-halfway-across-the-country. But I guess I thought this butterfly, who had braved half a world, could make it eight hours in a Honda. And it did. When I felt the time was right, I asked Minnesota to marry me and come to Kansas.

But as it turned out, I underestimated the cost of the trip. I was starting to see the same thing that happened with Belgium happen with Minnesota; the things we wanted were too different. I became tired and at last I had to resign myself to the seat at that old cottage in Tuscany. After that, it wasn't long before the moisture gathered, the wetness beaded, and finally, the boulder dropped. Minnesota moved to Hawaii for school. And I could not follow. "Marvelous captive/Trade me places/For my love is far from me/And my heart cannot fly."

Which is why I'm so lucky to have married Kansas. Where she flies, I am circling somewhere nearby, admiring the colors of the woman my eyes can see and my arms can hold. And at night, I tell my heart the story of the woman sleeping beside me.

Full text of the poem after the jump.

Butterfly Grounded

by Jay Carter III

Back when I lived in Tuscany

I stopped at an old cottage

And sat.

The warm breeze wafted

Scents of geraniums

Over my worn body.

Rested, Rocking

I shuffled my dusty

Shoes

And beat my worn

Hat.

As I squinted in the sunlight

Flitting, flying

Rising, diving

Flew a silver butterfly.

It came to me-ward

But a boulder of dew

Fell from a shingle.

Grounded, Struggling

The fairy shuffled its damp

Shoes

And Beat its heavy

Hat.

Marvelous captive,

Trade me places

For my love is far from me

And my heart cannot fly.