Butterfly Season

It was September when I wrapped my cat
in a bath-towel, and embraced him round
to all the places he loved to sit
unloved. As if he were alive,
I paused with him on the bed
he always wanted to share with me,
took him to the corner where we'd spent an hour together
looking at a full moon the week before
he arrived home from the vet's in a cardboard box.
I buried him in the bamboo grove behind the house.

One year later I lit some incense on the sill
that overlooks the withered leaves
blurring the spot where cat and earth are one.
A butterfly stirred,
and inscribed an arc about the house.
"May be nothing,"
the old cleaning lady said,
"but there may be something to it."
"Don't be silly,"
her husband retorted,
"Butterflies are everywhere in this season."

Note: In Japan and China the souls of the dead are often said to come back in the form of a butterfly.

Semantics

They say that "potion"
as in "love-potion,"
(Isolde and Tristan,
for example, drank it)
has its root in "poison,"
but in the notion "love"
does "antidote" dwell?

^

Biography

Peter McMillan is the founder editor of Illuminations and former editor of The Journal of Irish Studies. He lives in Tokyo, Japan