In August, Past Prime

Maureen Halligan Tobin

The sun's too high for outside work as I bend to pull at the invaders --foxtail, crabgrass, morning glory-- surprised down low when butterfly lights, indifferent and inches away. He brings a glimpse of shade, of Nabokov in long white socks, his furtive chase down forest path, net and wife and lunch on hand. . . too hot still, I watch slender proboscis, coiled like the tongue of a cartoon lizard stretch and plunge into the cosmos' pistil quiver, withdraw to plunge again into another tube of nectar and another curling and uncurling while altar-window wings fan absently as a man might scratch a shoulder with his restless whiskered chin.