Seven White Butterflies

Seven white butterflies

delicate in a hurry look

how they bang the pages

of their wings as they fly

to the fields of mustard yellow

and orange and plain

gold all eternity

is in the moment this is what

Blake said Whitman said such

wisdom in the agitated

motions of the mind seven

dancers floating

even as worms toward

paradise see how they banter

and riot and rise

to the trees flutter

lob their white bodies into

the invisible wind weightless

lacy willing

to deliver themselves unto

the universe now each settles

down on a yellow thumb on a

grassy stem now

all seven are rapidly sipping

from the golden towers who

would have thought it could be so easy?

What is the "it" that is so easy? I think perhaps the it is we, the beings of thoughts and agitated minds, worming ourselves towards paradise. What if instead of saying "this sucks" as the tag line of day to day living, we said instead, "How easy it is to love." We evolved to love and to give ourselves over to a better thing, to the universe. Our ivory towers of learning are not so different from the golden towers of summer's flowerful yield - sipping the nectar of the gods, of interconnection, of love.

I was recently reminded how easy it is to love. In fact, I was surprised. I have been watching a Desert Tortoise out my window all spring. She is digging a rather big hole in the middle of the yard and in between my writing and studying, I pause to glance at her digging and her sentinel like ways above her burrow. My spouse came home two evenings ago and said upon entering the house, "Is there a veterinarian in the house?" When I hear that I know that some animal has been injured or is sick. He led me unto the beginning of our driveway where we looked down on a tortoise who had obviously been crushed by a car that belongs to our household. I in turn was crushed. I turned the tortoise over - it was a female of about the same size as my friend of the back yard - and had died some time during the day. The rest of the day I kept looking at the tortoise burrow out back and not seeing "my" tortoise, I lapsed into tears and grief. Who knew I loved her so dearly? The next day though there she was, guarding her turf. So it was another that had died, no less lovely or loveable than the one I knew. How easy it is to love a tortoise. How easy it is to love each child of the universe.

How easy is it for you to love?