Annunciation as Fender's Blue Butterfly with Kincaid's Lupine

The endangered Fender’s blue butterfly

associates, not with common lupines,

but with the very rare Kincaid’s lupine.

—NATIVE PLANT SOCIETY OF OREGON

But if I were this thing,
my mind a thousand times smaller than my wings,

if my fluorescent blue flutter
finally stumbled

into the soft
aqua throats of the blossoms,

if I lost my hunger
for anything else

I’d do the same. I’d fasten myself
to the touch of the flower.

So what if the milky rims of my wings
no longer stupefied

the sky? If I could
bind myself to this moment, to the slow

snare of its scent,
what would it matter if I became

just the flutter of page
in a text someone turns

to examine me
in the wrong color?

-- Mary Szybist (1970- ), from Incarnadine, 2013 (National Book Award winner)

Images: top, from Oregon State University, pair of Fender's blue butterflies on Kincaid's Lupine; bottom, photo by Dana Ross, published by the Xerces Society. Fender's Blue butterfly is endangered; its habutat now consists of two small pockets of prairie in the Willamette Valley in Oregon that has the lupine on which it lays its eggs excusively.