Fingers Of Freedom! Poem by Denis Martindale

One morning, I looked out of the window,
as I let my eyes survey the garden,
to my amazement, I saw a butterfly,
there hanging within a spider's web,
that was supported on the washing line...
I immediately went to the kitchen,
opened the back door, went outside,
I walked up to the butterfly, checked it,
yes, it was still alive, with no spider in sight,
so my fingers surrounded the butterfly,
gently wresting it from the spider's web,
somehow freeing it to live another day...
There it was within my grasp, to choose,
if life or death, but of course, I already knew,
for my hope was to bless and not to curse.

So the butterfly righted itself, its wings safe
and I stood there, watched it fly to freedom,
safe and sound away from the spider and from me...
yet was that butterfly a female with eggs to lay?
Did I save more than one butterfly that day?
Are there thousands of butterflies alive now,
because I chanced to look out my window,
at that exact time in our lives upon this Earth?
And if I had got up an hour earlier, what then?
Would I never have seen that butterfly?
Would I have merely made the coffee?
Would I have merely watched the news on TV?
That chance event has changed my life...
For that was another fateful day I became a hero...
The day I saved another... with the fingers of freedom!


Denis Martindale, copyright, November 2013.