The Shadow Butterfly

It’s midmorning and I should be working.

Instead, I am curled up, like a cat,

watching a woodpigeon

through the window.

She is back and forth at her nest building,

twigs in the corner of her beak,

like a Wurzel with a stalk of wheat.

Busy fool, she puts my idleness to shame.

Inside, in the milk cartons all along the sill

rows of seedlings

arch like the corps de ballet,

tilting their faces up towards the sun.

They are grateful,

as I am, for the first heat of the year.

And then the shadow butterfly makes her entrance.

Caught in my peripheral vision,

a flicker of darkness,

she flits about the shadow net that holds me.

I open my white hand, palm up,

and she settles upon it.

I don’t look round.

This is enough.

(Highly Commended in the Wells Festival of Literature Open Poetry Competition 2021)