No, I will not sign your petition because I am full of the drama of being me and my heart has four chambers to fill and release, even in this morning of self-doubt, with its clouds of appeasement and a thousand dreary little flowers. I know Monsanto is evil incarnate, but like most things in this world they are bigger than me and my arms resemble wet flypaper from fighting all the things in this world that are bigger than me. I can barely flip an egg or write this poem. Besides, I have always been jealous of butterflies, with their runway worthy wardrobes and their ability to lift themselves into flight whenever the conversation becomes trite. I cannot contribute to the redemption of the world right now—my father has dementia, my husband is almost out of breath-right-strips and the cat barfed in the hallway, again. Today in the kitchen of no-sympathy I tried to hack away at the dry-rot of remorse, but my ego of no-return had gone on a sabbatical of never-ending proof. At this very moment, my heart may be choking on its own fumes. Plus, next December I’ll be fifty and I haven’t even been to France.
Can butterflies surmise their own demise? My mother had a butterfly tattoo on her right shoulder. It was brightly colored at first (as most things were in the 1970’s) but over the years it faded to a muddled black outline of something that might have resembled a butterfly at one time. One of her favorite movies was Papillon which means butterfly in French, but she was Spanish. She said Ay, Dios Mio a lot and made us go to midnight mass. What is this nostalgia that comes with autumn? This power-mower of want? Can I get a witness? Can I get validation? Can I lie down, right here, in the shadow of your verdict? This morning the tulips’ first green leaves in the muddy yard appeared, after twenty-three straight days of rain. Persistent protesters; I forget about them mostly. Yes, I know that radioactive fertilizer is the surprising primary cause of lung cancer in smokers, but I am concerned about the spider that lives in our mailbox, the implied havoc of the hose and the hobgoblins that stomp around the red habitat of my erratic heart, the one that has been beating nonstop for forty-nine years. Think about that—forty-nine years of nonstop beating.
You want me to think about mining and drilling on public lands during the government shutdown? I will try, but frankly I’d rather consider the watermelon radish and its similarity to an exploding star, a dying planet of sharp and peppery, sweet and bitter overtones. A virtual umami party slivered into cross-sections and tiled onto the greeny roof of my salad. It’s a lot like chaos theory, in which something ever so small (like the beating of butterfly wings) results in something huge, like the formation of a hurricane or the creation of a universe. This is called The Butterfly Effect. Isn’t that how it goes? You think something small and beautiful only applies to the moment, its impact fleeting and somehow insignificant. I do feel guilty that I don’t live in the first state to require GMO labeling, but then I generally live in a state of indecision. I am sorry that Wall Street is seeking last minute loopholes, but aren’t we all? Couldn’t everyone use a really good loophole, especially at the last minute? Considering how, along with the Monarch Butterfly, we will all, soon enough, be history.