i mull over  ways to reach you--
dismember your wounded memory,
hang it up outside your bedroom
like a spider?  Or on the wings of a stamp
that bears a picture of a butterfly,
deliver a parcel of love and caring
to your breakfast table?
your tightly closed window
gives no purchase to the little sandals
of a timid butterfly.

they say that the fluttering of butterfly wings
in the southern hemisphere can cause
a typhoon in a winter dream...if my heart
trembles like a lost butterfly brushing
the doors and windows of your heart

stirring a sweet fragrance from a day
before a wounded dawn, will you hear
again the chirping birds, singing insects,
and a conversation that continues for every
mile the wheels of my tires turn?

my unconditional love is fixed like a thumbtack
to the spot on the map where you reside
beyond the ocean of myth, where a necklace
of stars is spilling all its light, and a singing
voice is compressed into a single teardrop..

the day is too short and the nights are long
and the valley of death is never far away.
oh when will the pure lotus bloom?
we have both in our own ways lived our lives
to try to make up for all the cruelty of the world,
but under the clear sky where butterflies hover
i sometimes wonder

if the way of the sages
has truly ever once been practiced in this world