Lauren Eggert-Crowe

Between the Oaks and the Grass

You will scoop dead butterflies into your pockets.
Pierce their center with pins.

You will spread their violets and clovers on the kitchen table.
Teach your children what the army protects.

Five hundred butterflies will hush this field with their applause

for the percussion of rifle-fire.

You will instruct the soldiers to check the glass,
inspect each bolt and tire tread for powdered wings.

You will find out later that to pick the flowers is to transgress the rules.
And you should have left the fallen behind.

You will live for six months in a war zone.
You say this with tenderness.

There are petals all around us.
The butterflies flap the tiny colors of their country.
We are needled through the heart.

Symmetry

Wings make an orange hinge: speck for speck,
all eyes and teeth,

a tube body: An origami line for red paper hearts
valentines delivered to the dogbanes and crown vetch

that surround the field full of guns:
Has your eye ever met barrel?

The aching gaze crowning a black o.
A nexus. A genesis. A birth canal.

You see spirals.

The way a bomb pirouettes on its radius,
the way it blooms.