Three Poems
CAROL BUTLER


Mirage

The limestone in the desert
Is a dancer
In a lunatic backbend
A bear looming in a little boy’s bedroom
Manhattan after World War Three
Or maybe Stonehenge.
A spaceship settles in the snow
And fragments of water fall
Feeding stone flowers.




Villanelle de la Vielle

Will my children think me quite insane
Not to say ridiculous
Should I decide to love again?

Will their children laugh behind their hands
At a grandma so impetuous?
Will my children think me quite insane?

Should I remain invisible in black
Or go naked and precipitous?
Should I decide to love again?

Should I care what people say
Or be defiant and oblivious?
Will my children think me quite insane?

Should I scold my adolescent heart
Be dignified, meticulous?
Should I decide to love again?

Do I dare to risk such grief again
(Death being so omnivorous)
Will my children think me quite insane
Should I decide to love again?




Tribute

To Kiha
Dance
Is Life-and-Death.
She has no patience with students
Showing up to get their unit of P.E.
Chewing gum
Cell phone slicing through the sacred space.
She scares them into shape
Or, that failing,
Shames them into slinking from her class.
Suddenly
She’s a child lost in the forest
A young woman lost in longing
An old one lost in memory
Ever on the cliff’s edge
Even her eyes dancing.
I follow
Awkwardly at first
And then forgetting
I even have a body.