Today I saw a sparrow
chasing a tiger swallowtail—
the butterfly rose and dipped
and veered away
like a bright-sailed catamaran
in heavy seas
or a black-haired geisha
in lemon silk robes—her mind
as she entertains
a dull man.
It’s not that I didn’t want the bird
to catch something—to survive.
Could such a small brown thing
even swallow so much
living yellow? The sparrow
was so close behind—
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 27, Issue 4.
Jennifer Stewart Miller is the author of Thief (2021), winner of the 2020 Grayson Books Poetry Prize, A Fox Appears: A Biography of a Boy in Haiku (2015), and a chapbook, The Strangers Burial Ground (Seven Kitchens Press 2020). Her poems have lately appeared in Aquifer: The Florida Review Online, RHINO, Sugar House Review, Tar River Poetry, Verse Daily and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from Bennington College and a JD from Columbia University.See all items about Jennifer Stewart Miller
