Mourning Cloak

  

Come, mourning cloak, and settle on my hand
a touch of grace in grief. You mourn
for spring and summer, for the dying land
and I, the dead, the suffering, the unborn.

Your wings are faded now, a little worn,
ragged-edged, a shabby velvet black
and full of shadows, wandering forlorn,
in search of spring, in search of a way back

to times now gone. The months’ relentless track,
oh mourning butterfly, has brought us here
to rain-streaked nights, to trees all stripped and wracked
by storms at evening of the waning year.

I will not see you, butterfly, next spring.
Perhaps your daughter on my hand will sing.