Self-Portrait as a Butterfly Leaving

The wind is he
who comes to blow away our footprints. 

    -- from Southern Bushmen’s Song

Now it is 6:47 a.m. Dark panes.
Do not check email.
I wish to stay in my cave of questions
but the bodies of trees are already visible.
Soon all my thoughts will be too.

I’ve overeaten poetry in the dark again.
Not one more nibble of a poem of love, dying,
or the sun rising over the hills as it is now,
the traitor. I once thought her free speech of fire
was only inside of me, for my growth.

Can I just stay here
in the office of butterflies,
with its memos of moss and lichen?
A good swagger of wind leaves us
staggering in the grass, caught
on tree branches. Do not mistake us.
We don’t wish to linger, but remind
as you scroll, archive, and delete,
that leaves should stay green.

Remember caterpillars, air, whole trees
full of insinuating, intimate conversations,
rumors, murmurs, susurrations.