COMMENTARY: SIPPING THE SWEET NECTAR OF LIFE

A few butterflies have fluttered in. It makes my heart happy. Little marvels of tissue-thin, painted flappers they are. So delicate. So dainty. So dear.

I've been saddened by the growing scarcity of butterflies. But I was heartened by an article I read in a recent edition of our daily paper. This article said that there are places from which one can order butterflies! Such orders are placed by folks who wish to have them on hand to release at outdoor summer weddings or other meaningful ceremonies. If they can be ordered commercially, in numbers, perhaps my concern for their shortage can be alleviated.

The article didn't mention the cost of such butterflies. I imagine it is plenty. There would have to be big patches of milkweed for the monarchs alone, and then some sort of screen-guarded protection to keep out those other forms of life which would feast on the four stages of the butterfly metamorphosis the egg, larva, pupa, adult, then back to egg again. Then, of course, there would be the ubiquitous shipping and handling charges.

Suppose, though, that two dozen butterflies were released at an outdoor summer wedding. These same butterflies could then fly off, free to continue their own kind even though in the harsh world of sprayed chemicals and other hungry marauders.

I can pass long pleasant hours watching butterflies fluttering from flower to flower, sipping the sweet nectar of their short, winged stage of life. Shouldn't humans mimic this pattern of indulgence, sipping at life's fountains that provide the sweet moments of life? Yes, yes, yes! But, you might ask, what are they? You will know. Your heart, mind or whatever will make note of it. You will not have to verbally make a list of "sweet nectar" moments, nor even write them down, although some poets have tried to. Consider Wordsworth's "Cuckoo." He says, "Oh, blithe cuckoo, I hear thee and rejoice ... And I can listen to thee yet; can lie upon the plain and listen till I do beget the golden time again." In Colum's "An Old Woman of the Road," this old woman would find sweet nectar in "A dresser filled with shining delph, speckled and white and blue and brown." She could be busy all day "fixing on their shelf again my white and blue and speckled store!" (This old woman of Ireland was homeless, resultant of a system of eviction).

Wordsworth also found golden moments to sip from when he recalled the "host of golden daffodil" fluttering in the breeze. He says, "For oft, when on my couch I lie in vacant or in pensive mood, they flash upon that inward eye which is the bliss of solitude; and then my heart with pleasure fills, and dances with the daffodils." Wordsworth's heart also leaped up when he beheld the rainbow in the sky. Richard Hovey said, "I am fevered with the sunset."

Gazing long into the throat of a tulip, iris or morning glory, noting the parts that will make seeds and assure the continuation of its kind just as promised on the third day of creation is sweet nectar sipping for me, as well as watching a hawk sailing on high with apparently no wing motion at all, feeling the soft warm velvet along a horse's mouth, listening for the first attempted purring of a kitten, tasting the first strawberries of the season, feeling the tiny pressure of a baby's arms around your neck as it tries to return the hug you have given. A big book couldn't contain them all.

Shakespeare summed it up by stating in one of his poems, "Where the bee sucks, there suck I." Perhaps, for the sake of this article I should substitute butterfly for bee.

REJOICE!

Jean Bell Mosley is an author and longtime resident of Cape Girardeau.