I knew the woman. I see her regularly walking the two kids to school.
But this was strange. It looked as if husband was in tow – and was that
a young Gran and Gramps? A blackbird sang officiously from the tree to my left.
They were waiting, in the sun, all focussed on the carefully balanced net.
I was reminded of the girls lighting their Chinese lanterns.
Then they were waving, standing up, greeting the friends they’d been expecting.
The little group ebbed, flowed, reformed. Led by the woman with the net
they surged away from the main road, laughing together, and headed
for the tossing pink-flowered rose bed just under our driveway’s sorbus trees,
their white blossomed branches frothing in the stiff west wind.
It was only then I realised what was capturing their attention: a net
designed to hold a larva while it emerged into a butterfly.
Something was fluttering inside.
The phone cameras came out then.
The group round the net drew tighter.
The woman slowly undid the zip, lifted the lid.
The updraft caught the insect and it was aloft and out of sight
in a red-winged flash!
But I saw the sequel.
In a blue and rust-winged matching flash, slicing in from stage right,
came a canny jay, who’d been watching from the sidelines.
He was pursued immediately from the right by the no-longer-singing blackbird
noisily protesting its rights of ownership!
Too late! The jay rebuffed the blackbird with a sure flick of its wing.
It took three chunky beakfuls to end this short-lived idyll
and demolish the doomed butterfly.
But only I witnessed that.
The happy party below, job well done, were heading cheerfully home.
13 May 2022
Riverview Songs 