Buddleia

That year
Butterflies thronged
The buddleia tree:
Some in brown velvet
Set with violet eyes;
Some slashed with crimson satin
Edged with turquoise beads;
Some in fine muslin like young girls.

Pinions close
Like praying hands,
They sipped and dawdled
Over the dipping cones of purple
As if in Eden:
Seemed the splendid harbingers
Of many an Indian Summer.

We had forgotten
The full cycle brings again
The long dark loneliness
Of the cocoon.