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The Sunday Poem: Bruce Holsapple... Seeing As

Years ago many of us faced life among the industrial factories of America. Quite a few ended up here…in the Land of Enchantment. Bruce Holapple contemplates one of the lessons learned in Buffalo, New York.

Bruce works as a Speech-Language Pathologist in Magdalena. He’s published six books of poetry to date. His most recent book is Vanishing Act (La Alameda 2010). He’s also recorded poetry under the aegis of Vox Audio for the last eight years, producing CDs by Margaret Randall, Howard McCord, Nathaniel Tarn, Janet Rodney, Joseph Somoza, Alvaro Cardona-Hine, Todd Moore, Gene Frumkin, and Mary Rising Higgins, among others.

Seeing As

An abandoned stretch
of railroad track, lined by old factories
plumes of new goldenrod
school yard, neighborhood
providing some cloud
this afternoon
some abandon

Above the cinders
becomes waist-high
a field of purple threads
spiny knapweed & wild bergamot
which the bees work
(when you stop)
undulating between flowers,
black beads

A black swallowtail
blackened wings
fanning out & back
the intense band of (submarginal) blue
symmetric curl of yellow dots
pulling you down to
eyespots

a simple reflective fact
the outside staring back
confirmed & made into science
by a butterfly

the science of poetry—

& they rise by the millions
in July, flock to work
in their automobiles
wings of steel

blacken the sky
gridlock, exhaust
where they once walked
to the factory

a simple reflective fact

yet who’s better to say
what’s gained or what’s lost
or to measure the cost

than a butterfly?

Poetry submissions are welcome. Email theditchrider@gmail.com.

4 members like this

Comment by Julie Brokken on November 18, 2012 at 11:40am: who's better to say indeed! thank you!

Comment by Izquierdo on November 18, 2012 at 1:00pm: Great poem wrapped in a riot of color. As a born and raised Socorro County kid, I love Magdalena and its ambiance, art and black swallowtails, which I collect in my yard in the middle Rio Grande valley, wooing them with rue plants..

Comment by Thomas Caruthers on November 18, 2012 at 1:10pm: I would like to make it perfectly clear...my car does not pollute because I have the correct "bumper stickers" on the back bumper, the "correct" plastic bottled water inside and a Butterfly splattered on the windshield!...Ay, caramba!... Now tell me this... Is the universe unfolding...just as it should?

Comment by John Roche on November 18, 2012 at 8:21pm: Delightful poem, Bruce, composed with organic precision! Redolent of a post-industrial fugue, or maybe a Butterfly Sutra.

Comment by larry goodell on November 18, 2012 at 10:17pm: sends me out into the field, into "the science of poetry --" and back in again, thanks!

for a vibrant life . . .

Comment by Aaron Greenwood on November 19, 2012 at 11:25am: I worked in factories. I looked out windows, sometimes looking at butterflies and sometimes just wanting to be somewhere else. One day, on the way to work I sat by a pond watching water sliders. On that morning I realized that it is my responsibility to take care of myself. That one insight changed my perception radically. I was no longer working for "the man" I was working for myself and to respect myself I must do the best I could each day. I started to enjoy working.

The pond is still there, a new generation of water sliders skim the surface but the factory has long gone to ruin. Like your factory, nature has laid a claim on the land. The smokestacks now rise over other lands where once our jobs now belong to others. I think what we are seeing is the passing of America.

Comment by Margaret Randall on November 19, 2012 at 4:39pm: I was slow to read this poem, as I am in Central America, with Internet access intermittent. Got on line just now and found this treasure. Although written about Buffalo, so much of what's here relates to Guatemala as well. A butterfly might well know what's gained and what's lost in this beautiful but battered and impoverished country as well. Beautiful poem. Thank you, Bruce.