A Poem

I thought that poems had left me. It's been years since one has come to me, which is how it works for me. I've contemplated this lately...whether I could sit down and write one without a dose of inspiration. Poems arrived almost unbidden for years, and they practically hunted me down after my mother died, begging to be written. But for a few years now, there's been...nothing. Until the other evening when a butterfly flitted through the yard while we were all outside playing wiffle ball. The butterfly was a lovely pale lemon color, and it seemed so out of place, in an evening that seemed to herald fall.

Here it is, without a title:

The leaves yellowing at their fringes
The incessant chorus of crickets
And the evening’s brisk breeze
Remind me that summer is
Waning toward darker evenings
And November’s biting wind

The falling leaves, the relinquishing
A memory struggling to surface
Interrupted by you, butterfly,
Your flight a dance of dappled light
Cinderella
Waltzing through my yard


I'm not completely satisfied with this. It's awkward or something...and perhaps doesn't say all that I'd like it to. But that little lemony butterfly has been nagging me for a poem, and I had to write something to get started.