“Sky Flakes”

”It is blue butterfly day here in Spring/And with these skyflakes down in flurry on flurry,/There is more unmixed color on the wing/Than flowers will show for days, unless they hurry!

But these are flowers that fly, and seem to sing,/And now, from having ridden out desire/They lie closed over in the wind, and cling/Where wheels have freshly sliced the April mire.”
-Robert Frost

I saw them today, the tiny blue butterflies—but—only four of them. From when I was a child here I remember the kind of day the poet is talking about, when they were everywhere.
You don’t have to look for them, you can’t help but see their cerulean blue flutter against the straw-colored convalescing Earth.
And yes like all butterflies, they love mud and dung.
And yes, there’s usually one day in Spring where you see many of them, it’s their peak. Probably mating day, as Frost mentions, “having ridden out desire”.

Why so few here, now? I think it can only be because of the increasing human population of our plateau. Same reason that, as a teenager, I used to be awakened by a cacophony of birdsong in the copse outside my bedroom window. The trees are there still but the birds no longer hold their raucous conclave.

oh, that’s ok, hey, I’m not a human-hater.
But I think I’ll go out walking again now, hoping to see t least a few more of the “singing flowers”