NORMIE SALVADOR

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BUTTERFLIES OF THE STORM

On thermal updrafts
sculpting cumulonimbus,
rising with the forest mist;
speckling autumn the Amazon green,
monarchs of the sky were legion.

In Brownian distribution,
capering above the society of trees,
far beyond arboreal ambition,
butterflies flittered geo-synchronous
with the source of Earth’s breath.

Millions of circuit-board wings,
antennae, and ounces of microchip-thoraces
disrupted centuries-old arctic wind patterns,
churning strata of air and cloud-crystal.

A fragile gestalt of gossamer silicon,
gave birth to weather
twins, El Niño and La Nina.
Monsoons grew by a factor of ten,
chiseled the Himalayas, shaped their valleys
to spiral in moist air from the Indian Ocean.

Winds shifted their flow further
south of Canada, to the States,
over the Great Lakes.
Frost eddies heralded mammoth ice,
as sheets descended on Nebraska.

The Gulf Stream skimmed the Yangtze
flood plains carrying away Chinese
loess to the Caribbean isle of Jamaica.
Wayfaring pineapples could now take root,
refugees from the East.

Desert sands swept in from Mediterranean
to Middle East scouring with dry whispers,
weaving sirocco winds.
A susurrus that no longer
spoke with water’s Indian tongue.

The butterflies’ choreograph,
fed by light, winging on thermals,
were ignorant of their significance
as their passing changed the world
through fractal weather control.