Trying

Modern poetry modern verse contemporary poetry contemporary verse modern poem contemporary poem

The butterfly flicked

Along as if it despaired

Of this fluttering world.

~ Issa

[Englished by Phillip Whidden]

We try to see inside our minds and hearts

The buzzing of the bees from bloom to bloom

For nectars and for pollen stuck on parts

Of them, and with the slightest sift of gloom

Within our non-bee souls we realize

How trapped and limited we are despite

Our massive brains, how limited our eyes

At grasping everything inside the night

We live in.  We will never understand

The consciousness of flickering butterfly

Beside the rushed car highway, four wings fanned

In August hotness by the sun’s hot eye.

  Whooshed splats against our windshields end the life

    Of Monarchs.  We are banished from their strife.

© Phillip Whidden