The Butterfly Fairy

MONDAY, JULY 26, 2010


The Butterfly Fairy

It was a heartbeat in life when butterflies chased the sweet aroma among flowers throbbing in sunlight and yearned for a little of the sweet ambrosia. The summer sun moved later in the afternoon as it skidded toward the horizon. The butterflies’ fervor and the sun’s more southern daily path marked shortening days and longer nights after the solstice.

Like a tourist it flew south where it would stay until winter expired; the fall hiccup to gain an hour but small consolation. Day after abridged day the winter solstice approached when earth again can right itself after it wanders past its chilly equinox. It can not fall over, our big blue gyroscope.

This four-dimensionalism of the space time continuum confounded me in Mr. Williams’ elementary school science class and too frequently left my cognizant equilibrium.


The concept of time belies the theory that it is something static.

We live in the past attempting to conquer it. We devise things as great as Stonehenge in an attempt to measure it. We use time to gauge things. We attempt to bend it and constantly measure it. We want or fear its future.

Time is the one thing that binds all things together. Nowhere is there a lack of time although time exists in ways other than as perceived. Time is not before, during or after. Time is not necessarily when something happened. That science questions the existence of time is unconscionable. Time is what enables existence.

We long for a time machine to ask Dali about the Persistence of Time. Oh tenacious Time.


“In days gone by there was a land where the nights were always dark, and the sky spread over it like a black cloth, for there the moon never rose, and no star shone in the gloom.” This is a Grimm beginning, not the end. The moon keeps us company when the sun hides.


The black swallowtail dips against the sunset as the Monarch starts her long flight across the gulf. But for the moon it would be a long night.

Hans Christian Andersen wrote: "Just living is not enough" said the butterfly fairy, "one must have sunshine, freedom and a little flower." Sunshine is the key to life. In its absence the moon will just have to do.

“Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.” C. S. Lewis… the time is now, Butterfly Fairy. The time is now.


Play it again Sam.
© 07.26.2010 steven d philbrick SR+ DakotaDawg
POSTED BY SRPLUS AT 1:26 PM 0 COMMENTS