Vox Populi
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Peter Makuck: Tiger Swallowtails
No mail again, I’m walking from our tenant boxes when I spot clusters of fluttering wings yellow with black stripes in and out of the white and orange lantana then farther down the road only one hovering and diving toward something yellow on the asphalt. Closer, I see two more— down flat on the black surface, one not moving the other barely lifting a bright wing, both likely hit by a car when another car speeds by and blows the flier away but he comes back to flutter down close to the one alive, still moving its wings. * I’m sitting on our back deck with a beer. Sun almost gone, dark creeping from the trees earlier now, air taking on weight, birds going quiet. A cone falls from the pine. Joe and Ray . . . old college housemates, good friends recently gone. That swallowtail still hovers, hovers and dives.
Copyright 2022 Peter Makuck.
Peter Makuck’s many books include Long Lens: New and Selected Poems (BOA, 2010). He lives in Wilmington, North Carolina.
Eastern Tiger Swallowtail (female). Source: Wikimedia.
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Such delicate sadness — such a metaphorical tour-de-force by a poet I have admired for decades.
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Yes, Makuck’s poems sneak up on me.
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Took me a second reading, then a slow yes. Thank you
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Thanks, Barbara.
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Peter, I volunteer as an attorney for the Swallowtails’ Foundation and on their behalf I want to thank you for this fine poem.
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Thanks, John. I didn’t know you are an attorney.
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Well, you caught me. I’m not. Nor is there a Swallowtail Fnd. I just liked my friend Peter’s poem.
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