but rarely admit
what it has gone through -
the long nights
spent wrapped up
in some rusted bag of past,
days before when
walked on stomach,
mornings fresh fat
on the rug,
wriggling under
some menaced robin head.
We delight in its bijou,
its glass head of colour,
how the little bob to
the flower
gives us safety.
On your shoulder,
it is a good rest,
sweet and sleepy velvet,
and oh, what a love
for loving you, for making it here
to a poem
yet
we want no more of before please,
no learning what to make of glue -
lullabies of limbs
already used, incense
cracked through
fur coats,
sweated out
in snifters
of trees drunk
flat by moonlight.
We don’t write
how it marbled its head,
hanging  from a drip branch
or its unplucked heart
as it goes through the ages
like a shed of roughed
skinned souls
in a coconut asylum
no -
we only delight 
in the beauty
of the butterfly,
and admit no changes.