I Didn't Know

I DIDN’T KNOW 31 March 2016 . I didn’t know, as the sun dawned that day last week - or was it the week before? – that it had awoken the Day of the Butterflies. Out in the back garden, with Benji-dog and Cleo-cat, while the kittens were eating their breakfast inside, I was weeding with gusto and satisfaction . . . and then . . . there you were . . . the tiniest little butterfly I have ever seen, sitting on a weed I was about to pull up! Your wingspan was the width of my smallest fingernail – dark you were, perhaps black, with faint dotted yellow stripes, two of them on each tiny little wing. I gazed in ecstasy at your minute beauty – no doubt you had all the organs of any butterfly encased in your miniscule body. I didn’t want to leave you, little fairy butterfly, but I felt compelled to get my camera to record your exquisite little self for posterity. When I came out again, I couldn’t find you, but you had infused your magic into my being, and my elation was almost unbearable and your image was pinhead-fluttered on my mind with butterfly footsteps for as long as I shall live. I wanted to tell the world of you – yet I wanted to keep you as my precious secret too . . . hence the delay in writing this.
. And as though I wasn’t butterfly-high enough already, minutes later, sitting in the sunlight with Benji on my knee and Cleo at my feet, you, another butterfly, the most “common” in the garden, a Junonia oenone, a Dark Blue Pansy with your large rich blue spot on each wing, but every bit as precious, alighted on my foot. I am sure I must have held my breath – fortunately Cleo isn’t a hunter-kitty and she gave you a pensive glance and turned away – you must have sat there for perhaps a minute, but it felt like a nanosecond and forever. I had heard of this happening to other people, but this was a first for me. I wondered for a silly moment, if you did that in honour of the awe I felt for that tiniest little butterfly that ever could be . . . it certainly felt like it . . . that Day of the Butterflies . . .