PATRICIA HOOPER
In the Butterfly Aviary
January: the glare
of ice over grey roads,
but inside this
steamy terrarium
everything’s heated up
to a steady eighty. Even
the guard’s in his element,
vacationing for the day
in Brazil, or leading a tour
through an Amazon rain forest.
When the Blue Morpho alights
on his cap, he announces, “The largest
butterfly in the house,”
to the schoolchildren who catch
on their shoulders the smaller parcels,
checkerspots, admirals,
and the rare Archduke, for which
the guard summons his reverence.
It might well be a circus,
those two metalmarks perched
on the teacher’s hair, or the sulphur
chasing a red-cheeked girl,
but the guard ushers the class
to the chrysalis in the corner
where rebirth is the lesson.
Brief lesson! It’s kindergarten,
so he isn’t surprised when the children
move on to the Atlas Moth
spread flat on the oleander.
They’d like to stretch out like that
in the heat and give up their loads
of snowsuits and strings of mittens
which they drop, just thinking it, under
a blizzard of Blue-winged Hairstreaks
from Costa Rica. No,
it isn’t these fancy imports
who’ve stolen the show, but simply
the pool under the mango,
which the children are drifting toward
with the tigerwings, sprawling out
on the moss-covered brink where a boy
opens his palm and produces
a pebble, letting it slip
overboard in an instant.
For a moment the morning’s quiet
as they lie watching the leaves
reflected in ripples, stirring
the warm bath with their fingers,
swallowtails on their backs,
which they hardly notice, as if
the sky weren’t glass and that ledge
of snow hung on the leaded
bars holding it up
were only a cloud passing over
their hands dipped in the mirror
everything’s tumbled under:
trees, vines, butterflies, sky,
and the guard’s wavery face
staring back with their own from a place
they had almost forgotten, summer.
In the Butterfly Aviary
January: the glare
of ice over grey roads,
but inside this
steamy terrarium
everything’s heated up
to a steady eighty. Even
the guard’s in his element,
vacationing for the day
in Brazil, or leading a tour
through an Amazon rain forest.
When the Blue Morpho alights
on his cap, he announces, “The largest
butterfly in the house,”
to the schoolchildren who catch
on their shoulders the smaller parcels,
checkerspots, admirals,
and the rare Archduke, for which
the guard summons his reverence.
It might well be a circus,
those two metalmarks perched
on the teacher’s hair, or the sulphur
chasing a red-cheeked girl,
but the guard ushers the class
to the chrysalis in the corner
where rebirth is the lesson.
Brief lesson! It’s kindergarten,
so he isn’t surprised when the children
move on to the Atlas Moth
spread flat on the oleander.
They’d like to stretch out like that
in the heat and give up their loads
of snowsuits and strings of mittens
which they drop, just thinking it, under
a blizzard of Blue-winged Hairstreaks
from Costa Rica. No,
it isn’t these fancy imports
who’ve stolen the show, but simply
the pool under the mango,
which the children are drifting toward
with the tigerwings, sprawling out
on the moss-covered brink where a boy
opens his palm and produces
a pebble, letting it slip
overboard in an instant.
For a moment the morning’s quiet
as they lie watching the leaves
reflected in ripples, stirring
the warm bath with their fingers,
swallowtails on their backs,
which they hardly notice, as if
the sky weren’t glass and that ledge
of snow hung on the leaded
bars holding it up
were only a cloud passing over
their hands dipped in the mirror
everything’s tumbled under:
trees, vines, butterflies, sky,
and the guard’s wavery face
staring back with their own from a place
they had almost forgotten, summer.
CAVE WALL PRESS, LLC
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Patricia Hooper’s poems have appeared in The American Scholar, The Atlantic
Monthly, The Iowa Review, Kenyon Review, Poetry, The Southern Review, and other
magazines. Her most recent books are At the Corner of the Eye (Michigan State
University Press), Aristotle’s Garden (Bluestem Press), and a forthcoming collection
that won the Anita Claire Scharf Award from the University of Tampa Press.
Monthly, The Iowa Review, Kenyon Review, Poetry, The Southern Review, and other
magazines. Her most recent books are At the Corner of the Eye (Michigan State
University Press), Aristotle’s Garden (Bluestem Press), and a forthcoming collection
that won the Anita Claire Scharf Award from the University of Tampa Press.