Butterfly dreams

Tomorrow morning I’m going to be leading a Zoom meeting of an art group I facilitate. We are going to be watercolor painting, each of us in our own home with our own supplies. I’ve never tried something like this before and I’m feeling a bit nervous about how it will go.

This morning I decided to sit down to paint to calm myself and because I haven’t done any painting for at least a week. Above you see the final result of my painting and how I combined a photograph of the painting with a photo I had made many years ago.

I call this  image

Butterfly Dreams

When I searched I found this lovely poem by Mary Oliver about butterflies.

One Or Two Things – Mary Oliver
1
Don’t bother me
I’ve just
been born.

2
The butterfly’s loping flight
carries it through the country of the leaves
delicately, and well enough to get it
where it wants to go, wherever that is, stopping
here and there to fuzzle the damp throats
of flowers and the black mud; up
and down it swings, frenzied and aimless; and sometimes

for long delicious moments it is perfectly
lazy, riding motionless in the breeze of the soft stalk
of some ordinary flower

3
The god of dirt
came up to me many times and said
so many wise and delectable things; I lay
on the grass listening
to his dog voice,
crow voice,
frog voice; now
he said, and now,

and never once mentioned forever,

4
which has nevertheless always been,
like a sharp iron hoof,
at the center of my mind.

5
One or two things are all you need
to travel over the blue pond, over the deep
roughage of the trees and through the stiff
flowers of lightning — some deep
memory of pleasure, some cutting
knowledge of pain.

6
But to lift the hoof!
For that you need
an idea.

7
For years and years I struggled
just to love my life. And then

the butterfly
rose, weightless, in the wind.
“Don’t love your life
too much,” it said,

and vanished
into the world.

My original painting

May you walk in beauty.

Here is the butterfly photo I made many years ago