Respite

Some person, she couldn’t recall who, or even when

said, ”Maddy, go to Callaway Gardens.”

So she drove from northern Florida

to the low Georgia mountains, to the pines,

lakes, thickets of muscadine grapes, and thousands

of calling birds, who were mating, nesting, giving birth.

The room they gave her was forest damp, worn out, shabby even,

a perfect fit for Maddy’s spirit. The morning after a quiet night,

she walked through woods to the butterfly pavilion.

Glass high above and all around, awed children softly laughing,

water falling, reds, yellows, every single green growing,

winged creatures fluttering wherever she looked,

pulled her from the narrow room

in the nursing non-home

where her father died earlier that spring.

In the sunlit, moist enclosure,

a bright Blue Mortho chose her,

alighted on her breast,

where it stayed and stayed,

even as she walked, whispering,

down the Wonderland paths of the butterfly palace.