Spring Azure / Mariposa (I)

Spring Azure

I love my friends, 
I said
over and over 

in my head. I saw 
a forget-me-not
coloured butterfly 

in stop-motion flutter
over a memorial 
ground of white 

flowers. Go beyond 
your mind, 
Jesus said. Beyond 

my mind is a gate, 
and beyond 
the gate is math

and a fractal blue 
butterfly blinking 
an indecipherable 

semaphore 
of wings. At the edge
of my dissolving

are those who know
me before me
dissolving. How large 

must we grow
before we become
a thing

indistinguishable 
to another 
thing from the sea,

from the blue sails, 
tacking leeward
between the trees. 

Mariposa (I)

Did I say, lonely?
I meant, lovely. 
I meant, the mariposa 

lily reminds me,
in colour and shape,
of something
 

I might kiss, deeply. 
I say
desire is a form

of fear. You say the body
is the soul’s way
of summoning another 

soul. Whatever
that means. I think
the foothill

of this mountain 
with its community 
of lilies and sagebrush

is inside me 
and I’m in 
the long afterlife 

of History. I think 
thinking
about my feelings 

rarely helps me 
feel differently. 
In the cancer ward 

where you slept
the curtains were 
the pale lilac of the lily.