The challenges inherent in life are meant to help all manner of creatures. For in the efforts of overcoming, are moments of peril that make us stronger and better and hopefully kinder to those struggling around us.

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.

Next poem: Silhouettes

Author: Jerry Dan Deutschendorf
from: Red Earth Whisperings
Part I: Nature and the Nature of Things