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.
