Graphium sarpedon
The Buddha regards the slender lunes
of blue and crossed white, the bands
laddering up and down each wing to make
those familiar blue-green triangles. Pressed
between two sheets of glass, immobile, far
from any treeline or canopy: in which humid
rainforest of his archipelago was this one
gathered? He picks up the framed souvenir
and walks with it to the gift shop counter,
prodded by a faint, familiar throbbing
where his thorax or abdomen might be,
had he wings more swiftly to traverse
the interstitial spaces in this life.
In response to Via Negativa: Henri Matisse: The Cut-outs at the Tate.