January 2019
Penny Harter
penhart@2hweb.net
penhart@2hweb.net
In 2002, after eleven years living in Santa Fe (a mid-life leap after living most of our lives in NJ), my late husband Bill Higginson and I moved back to northern NJ to be closer to family again. Grandchildren started being born, plus we missed our kids. After Bill died in 2008, I moved again, down to the South Jersey shore area to be near my daughter and her family. I am about a forty-minute drive inland, on winding country roads, from the Atlantic Ocean.
Butterfly Kisses
Note: The Butterfly Effect: According to quantum theory, a hurricane in China can be caused by a butterfly flapping its wings on the other side of the planet. If the butterfly had not flapped its wings at just the right point in space/time, the hurricane would not have happened.
When I visited my Nana’s house,
she’d tuck me in and kiss me
goodnight with butterfly kisses—
delicately merging her eyelashes
with mine as we blinked together.
Years later, I butterfly-kissed my own
children to sleep, bent over them
mingling my eyelashes with theirs,
or sometimes just grazing their cheeks
with a faint tickling.
Lovers, husbands have come and gone
over the years, some welcoming my gift
of butterfly-kisses, others shying away.
Once I saw a migrating Monarch cover
another with its wings, becoming one.
If there is a heaven, if the tiny breeze
born from the opening and closing
of our eyelids with those of the beloved
can find its way there, what angel might
open its wingspan to enfold us?
Note: The Butterfly Effect: According to quantum theory, a hurricane in China can be caused by a butterfly flapping its wings on the other side of the planet. If the butterfly had not flapped its wings at just the right point in space/time, the hurricane would not have happened.
When I visited my Nana’s house,
she’d tuck me in and kiss me
goodnight with butterfly kisses—
delicately merging her eyelashes
with mine as we blinked together.
Years later, I butterfly-kissed my own
children to sleep, bent over them
mingling my eyelashes with theirs,
or sometimes just grazing their cheeks
with a faint tickling.
Lovers, husbands have come and gone
over the years, some welcoming my gift
of butterfly-kisses, others shying away.
Once I saw a migrating Monarch cover
another with its wings, becoming one.
If there is a heaven, if the tiny breeze
born from the opening and closing
of our eyelids with those of the beloved
can find its way there, what angel might
open its wingspan to enfold us?
© 2018 Penny Harter
Editor's Note: If this poem(s) moves you please consider writing to the author (email address above) to tell him or her. You might say what it is about the poem that moves you. Writing to the author is the beginning of community at Verse Virtual. It is very important. -FF