A Butterfly’s Advice and Other Poems
by Grace Shaw
A Butterfly’s Advice
When I learned to fly, I did not imagine
a case around my unmaking.
My elders made it seem simple
as instinct, but believe me:
Living is an imprecise and vivid science.
Learn it. It will
hurt but be worth your time
to remember surrender
will feel like an orange peel
ripped off the body.
You, earth bird, are
not a fox or a kite. The pending
dissolution of you in darkness
means this chrysalis
is no den. You will not
float on wind pinned to a hand
by some long, taught string.
That is not flying.
Rest, rather, as an acorn—
a thing bound
now in the shell of itself,
yet somehow already
for its wings.
Florist Blessing
May each morning afford you
leisure to rearrange
the way you twist the base
of a half-finished bouquet.
May your days be plenty
and simple—familiar as the buds
of a hundred, pearly snapdragons.
May there come from every bucket
a tulip just tall enough.
May the perfect snips for the stems
you are holding find your hand.
May the unshapely, rubber-banded
bundles of your mind
soon sink, neatly stripped,
into their vases.
Let your joys shed their shells
like poppies, revealing
ever-brighter centers.
Set regrets aside like extras:
broken, but not too short
for everything.
May summer color you,
autumn soften you,
winter limit you,
and every spring
bring something back to you,
like a farmer’s hatchback
full of forsythia whispering, Life, this life,
is a resurrecting thing.
Psalm 23
Bring me quiet
like the hum
among organ chords.
Like dust above
church pews,
suspend me in light.
Tend me
like shrubbery,
rinse me, then
wade me down
in living rivers.
Don’t allow me
to waver long
inside my fissures.
Break me like morning
over mountains. Pour
your silver glory
to solder me.
Set time like a table.
Adorn every day
with a place to lay
a little more of me,
like gold leaf,
on your royal molding.
Grace Shaw is an emerging poet with work appearing in journals at the intersection of faith and art including Fathom Magazine and Reformed Journal. Her poem “Say it Like Flowers” recently won the Audience Choice Award in the Bright Wings Poetry Contest 2022 (presented by Ekstasis Magazine and the Makers and Mystics podcast). Having earned her MFA from Seattle Pacific University, she now lives, works, and enjoys the plentiful symmetry of succulents in Los Angeles, California. Visit her work at graceshawpoetry | Instagram | Linktree and @graceshawpoetry on Instagram.