Thailand Earrings

Hello Dear Ones! Today’s draft is an attempt to pull together three different things into one coherent idea. It’s not there yet, but I can feel the edges of it. Something about what is beautiful what is fragile and how they are the same thing.

I paused at the steps to my porch because a butterfly stood still,

upright on the second step.

While I stood there, a hummingbird flew across my chest,

jeweled green in the afternoon sunlight.

It made me think of the iridescent beetle wings they use to make earrings in Chiang Mai,

beloved of color-starved tourists.

Earrings she wears one time at home,

out to dinner at the new vegan place in the converted loft part of town,

they make soft scratching noises when she turns her head,

rest on her neck like fingers, warm

from the soft summer air.

Earrings that she places, carefully, in a box with

thick silver cuff bracelets, wood costume rings, and

the beads from the street monks in London.

These earrings, shifting blue and green and flashes of silver,

bring so much joy that one sight of them sinks into long term memory,

there to rest, touched by reverie and daydreams --

like the hummingbird that flew across my chest,

distracting my eyes from a butterfly

dying in the sun on my front porch steps.