I come upon a dead butterfly in the parking lot.
The blackest asphalt sets off the shimmering seafoam scales of his one remaining wing:
A wedge of Luna and lime
against a tarmac night sky.
I wonder where the other wing is,
And when he lost it.
It might have cracked off and blown away
long after he was dead,
Like a sheet of snowflakes.
But he probably lost it while he was still living,
Hit by a car or an ignorant wayward step,
Left to flutter and stumble to his demise
Like a wounded soldier or a choking fish;
A cerulean one-winged sailboat
Overturned on the vast black pavement.