A myriad of brilliant butterflies

Trim full-rigged rainbow sails on rippling waves

Of golden daisies hiding these poor graves

Where one-time travellers rest from longing cries

For meaning in a world of thoughtless love

Of its own self, while some souls anguished wait

For the faintest glimmer of a smile, innate

In knowing hearts enlightened from above.

The lepidoptera race is on. She craves,

Or so she should, a course as would the dove,

But siren-like another bloom enslaves

Her as she flits from buoy to buoy in aimless rove.

While pondering truth with logic's searching gaze

Forgive this soulless creature's wanton ways.

At the Chikankata burial ground

January 1971