BUTTERFLY WALKS OFF (ODE TO A COOL CAT)

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Butterfly was stiff, found dead on a grassy dune,

ants eating her eyes. We buried her right there,

right where we found her, and marked the spot

with driftwood and stones, a lover’s grave.

She’d disappeared a few nights before, on February third,

and was seen by a neighbor, walking slowly,

going towards the ocean, a thing she’d never done before.

She’d been tippy, wobbly, weak, 16 years old, couldn’t jump,

always hungry, purr humming every time I picked her up.

The morning after she left, a yellow butterfly came up to me,

flying, dancing, happy as could be, quite a ways off-shore,

where you don’t usually see butterflies.

I didn’t think about that butterfly and our yellow Butterfly

being one and the same right away. Instead, I kept on

paddling along, dreamlike, thinking of another February third,

the night Neal Cassady walked off , jeans, t-shirt, no coat,

going along the railroad tracks outside San Miguel de Allende.

Neal was found the next morning, alive, clicking and muttering,

but unconscious, suffering from exposure and hypothermia.

He never did come to, but I doubt that stopped Neal from

catching his train and getting where he wanted to be.

Death is all weird and always arrives unexpected. Strange

that everyone knows it’s coming, long before the first hello,

and all the how-are-yous. Whoa — one day we won’t be here

the same way we are now.