“I confess I do not believe in time”
I wrote for June 5,
thinking of butterflies,
but they were a week behind,
like everything else I love.
The archive says June 12.
The magazine,
tucked in some library’s hush,
must wait until next Thursday
to spill its colored plates,
its ghosts, its nets.
But I had already started walking,
mistaking
the mimic for the original,
the shade for the leaf,
the Mourning Cloak
for a memory.
So let this be
my false anniversary,
my misdated page-glade,
my premature wingbeat.
Nabokov showed
how to fold the carpet
so the pattern overlaps—
a butterfly pinned to nothing
but breath.
9 thoughts on "“I confess I do not believe in time”"
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Thank you poet.
I am a fan of ” a butterfly pinned to nothing/ but breath.”
Great title! that patterns into the poem very well.
thank you
Good lord this is terrific! That last stanza blew my damn mind.
thank you
Thank you for the gracious & supportive comments on a meta-poem that probably didn’t need to see the light of digital day, but it’s all true — the publication history did go tricksy on me while my back was turned — and I’m nothing if not slavishly bound to calendrical and literary-historical time.
“This one may make more sense next Thursday” is not the LexPoMo vibe I personally would advocate for, but here we are, and I’m grateful to you for remembering into the future with me, hearing echoes of the words not yet shared.
Daaaannggg.
Awesome.
thank you
love:
tucked in some library’s hush
a butterfly pinned to nothing
but breath.
thank you