My poem “Lepidopterist” is in the digital and print issues of the lovely journal Plainsongs, Fall 2025. We were driving through Eastern Washington recently and passed a farmhouse that evoked a memory. I doubt that it was the same house, but it reminded me of one two dear friends lived in during the 1970s. I wrote this poem about them – and everyone who truly honors the one they love. When we do this, miracles happen!
Linda lived with Wendy in the oldest
house in the county about a mile
out of town. Its attic
was perfect, with its peaked ceiling
rafters, for where Linda
needed to place cocoons: warmth
always at a slant, giant incubator
full of dust mites and pollen.
Lepidopterist, Linda’s passion was
emerging wings and she and Wendy
rented the place for their nursery.
Wendy helped tuck the finger-tip-sized
swaddles into the crooks of beams
smelling of old forests and honey.
Wendy’s calling was horticulture
and she hoed a full acre for root settings,
food for every pattern
of fragile transformation.
I remember thinking, back then,
about collaborative love. Wondering
how many swallowtails and luna moths
slept inside of me and who would
find the house where we could raise them?
Who would plant fields of hungry
beauty? And how many
would even survive into spring
when Linda and Wendy walked hand-
in-hand up the rickety steps
to witness a steeple of wings?