Hold Every Moment Sacred
a small yellow butterfly
surprised was I to see,
one late winter morning
as it lightly danced by me.
it was the only butterfly
I saw that precious day.
and as it past, I wondered
what had caused its path to stray
so early in the season,
before the flowers bloom;
when nights are cold and frost might
prove its rude, untimely doom.
oh, as it fluttered by me,
so fragile in the wind;
I thought not of what really was
but that which might have been.
the creature had but disappeared
before I fathomed how
I’d failed to grasp the simple grace
of living here and now.
– Jerry Dan Deutschendorf