Volcano Cemetery
I dreamt that I was a butterfly. When I woke up, I did not know whether I was Chuang-tzu who had dreamt he was a butterfly or a butterfly who was dreaming that he was Chuang-tzu.
in August’s high noon of summer butterflies play with death in the air. on Highway 17, the TransCanadian, a pair embraced smash! against my windshield— death is not a thing, can never play.
a butterfly laughs in Chuang-tzu’s dream. his sister, with white wings, flits above the cold rock of an extinct volcano’s magma core...
at Neys Point on Lake Superior’s northern shore a billion years later than the lava flow I watch the white flutter against the water and know this now and that now and fuse the two: one billion years of now: our time dancing inside the living and the dead. my mind pulls a heavy haul of time in tow.
I pay my respects to the living and the dead, my teachers in the volcano cemetery.