The Butterflies of October
While walking an older neighborhood in early October, I came across a bedraggled mourning cloak butterfly drawing sustenance from one of numerous crushed crab apples on the sidewalk. Its broken and battered wings flapped silently as it drank. The sight of it-- coupled with the scent of apples and the clear October air--took me back thirty years to the autumn I worked as an apple picker at an orchard in New Hampshire, and I paused a moment there on the concrete, remembering.
Picking apples was hard work, and the thirty-five cents per bushel I received was a dime more than the going rate. Still, the job had its benefits: the pleasure of being outdoors all day in beautiful weather, and all the freshest, crispest apples one would care to eat.
It was during a break that I encountered the butterfly. Tired of the taste of apples, I had gone over to the peach grove, where the owners had given me permission to take any of the dropped fruit. I was sitting under a tree, enjoying a perfectly ripe peach when an exhausted monarch butterfly fell onto the grass in front of me, its wings raked with scratches and broken edges. It appeared to be near death.
Gingerly, I picked it up, and its spindly legs clung wearily to my thumb. When I dribbled some nectar from the peach onto my thumb, the little creature unfurled its licorice whip of a proboscis and drank heartily for a few minutes. The butterfly stayed a while longer, seemingly gathering its strength. It flapped its wings slowly several times, then more vigorously, as it lifted itself into the brilliant sky and sailed off to meet its destiny.
Back on the crab apple strewn sidewalk, the memory of that day, 3 decades ago, flashed through my mind in seconds. I marveled at the fragility of life, and its tenacity, and that an image and a scent can tie together past and present in a single moment.
© 2005 Shay Seaborne. All rights reserved.
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