PART I

A drab garden on a slope has sprouted butterfly wings
In which the gardener has laid a
Civilization of Strawberries planted one October afternoon
as the Earth’s north tipped away from the Sun. 
The Sun, and its generosity, heading south.

The butterfly garden was laid east to west, head to tail, 
with the wings spread left to right, north to south.
In ordinary places and in ordinary times,
both wings have equal opportunity 
at the sun’s generosity
and the earth’s vitality.

But in this human made north-south axis
The gardener (unconsciously?) favors the northern wing, 
placing it where it would get the best and most 
opportunity at sun basking, 
ensuring a prolific output and the gardener’s attention.

The southern wing, with its back up against 
a shadow-casting wall,
put its energy into growing taller, 
with bigger leaves and blooms.

When spring came around in April, 
the first spring since planting,
the explosion of all that vital energy was phenomenal.
The opportunity to thrive that the strawberries strove for 
all fall and winterlong, 
arrived as the sun returned to the northern sky
and the earth opened itself wide 
to the gift of light for vigorous life.

The fluttering butterflies and bumbling bees 
came from far and wide for a drunken pollinating feast.
And out of that delicate flutter, and bumbling sting, 
came the sweetest juicy fruit earth and sun ever made
as offered by the gardener’s northern butterfly wing, 
prolific in its attraction of pollinators
for the alchemy of sweetness in the strawberry kingdom.

The southern wing though prolific in height 
and the wide palm of its leaves, 
could not turn the earth, fire, water, and air into
the alchemical magic that explodes suns in one’s mouth
as a single juicy strawberry.
The season was too short, for one forced to grow 
in the shadow of a human-made wall.

PART II
To be continued....