SEPTEMBER BUTTERFLIES
Jane Stuart
When summer’s moon climbs over nighttime’s sky
and autumn rains plummet their icy chill
across earth filled with summer’s butterflies
and small blue birds flying to every hill,
before September comes, our earth is green
and full of leafy trees, chrysanthemums,
pumpkins that grow among the aubergine
shadowed fields that early frost will numb—
September’s butterflies leave before fall
comes suddenly with cold and bitter frost
that takes summer away in early squalls
of a light winter snow that night embossed
so gently we did not see night’s paintbrush
color our world with autumn’s first pale blush.
