Member-only story
The Butterfly Children
Poetry
The end of the world did not come with an explosion
born from the wars of men or the weapons they made,
but the space voyagers came and went in their shuttles
until there was little but the breath of wind on the scape.
How could it be that the scientists foresaw a future
where the earth choked on its own smog and filth
when the green still persisted in its expansion?
It was a mystery because facts were hard to deny,
but the explorations to the stars beyond had distracted,
just as — I suppose — they were actually meant to do.
People may have become a sore commodity,
but the earth did not miss them, not really,
because even Mother Nature knew about toxic relationships.
*
But the strangest things of all were the butterflies,
so fleeting once in their appearances — born to die
too soon, all the ready to disappear by summer’s end.
This was a different world, though, where humans
