Swallowtail

In my dream last night

our glass-jarred chrysalis

hatched huge and unwieldy,

and your ten-year-old fingers

fashioned bright splints of balsa

to prop up its wings.

Now, as the world wakes,

you cry out

that the pearled green lobe

is finally darkening to life.

You lie barely breathing on the grass

in the slow seep of dew,

custodial,

watching the pulsing thorax

slide free of its milky husk.

Witnesses

of another winged birth,

we watch these crumpled rag-wings,

night wings, neon-dusted,

stretch to taut velvet,

shore up the air beneath them,

and lift, lift

to enter the shifting clouds

as truth enters a dream.