Visitations

White butterflies
glancing off a breeze

along cliff-top grasses –
a frieze of lacemakers

intricately at work
beneath the bay’s

array of scintilla –
stars of an instant only,

each rhapsodic flare
a bloom in a garden

swept by the clouds’
unsettled silver.

I walk on past inklings
that pulse fervidly,

with pauses to sip,
across the daisied fields.

Flat on the path
a wanderer butterfly

lets its design speak
from absolute stillness,

the eyeless wings
a luminance

of honeyed orange
with black veins looped

to conjure petals,
the whole flower.

Up and gone before
I can breathe,

now suddenly back,
its kiss on my wrist.

Diane Fahey is the author of thirteen poetry collections, ‘November Journal’ being the most recent. She has won major poetry awards, and has received literary grants from the Australia Council. Her poetry has been represented in over seventy anthologies. Diane holds a PhD in Creative Writing from UWS. dianefaheypoet.com