indentA long time ago, Nonnie Augustine received a BFA from Juilliard in dance. After lots of dancing she was injured and went back to school to get an MS in special education at Florida State University. Then she taught emotionally disturbed children for fifteen years. She loved doing that, but her heart rebelled, and she had to stop. She has been writing poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction since 2003, and is the poetry editor for The Linnet’s Wings. Her work has been published here and there. Nonnie makes money writing now and then, and is warmly attached to her blog.

indentVia mysterious paths and unforeseen circumstances, Nonnie lives with her brother in Panama City Beach, Florida.

 
Blue Morpho
©
March 4, 2011
 

Some person, she couldn’t recall who, or even when,
said, ”Maddy, go to Callaway Gardens.”
So she drove from northern Florida
to the low Georgia mountains, to the pines,
lakes, thickets of muscadine grapes, and thousands
of calling birds, who were mating, nesting, giving birth.
The room they gave her was forest damp, worn out, shabby even,
a perfect fit for Maddy’s spirit. The morning after a quiet night,
she walked through woods to the butterfly pavilion.
Glass high above and all around, awed children softly laughing,
water falling, reds, yellows, every single green growing,
winged creatures fluttering wherever she looked,
pulled her from the narrow room
in the nursing non-home
where her father died earlier that spring.
In the sunlit, moist enclosure,
a bright Blue Morpho chose her,
alighted on her breast,
where it stayed and stayed,
even as she walked, whispering,
down the Wonderland paths of the butterfly palace.

 

© Nonnie Augustine

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