Seventh Wreath
Blue butterfly, with blood sewn in your hem,
your pattern carries, and is copied through
an unseen thread that shimmers in each stem
to bloom again, variegated, new,
from every bulb that flowers on this heath
where blood and spirit make their rendezvous.
Crowning earth men and children sleep beneath,
grass tops their graves. Flowers are their diadem,
weaving their petals in a living wreath
spun, unseen, from the soil heaped over them,
perfuming this entire necropolis
and bugling to the wind their requiem.
Rooted in death, but death’s antithesis,
what is this wreath, if not hope’s chrysalis?
Richard Burns
