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Butterfly Mothers

Writer's picture: Chris NashChris Nash

Updated: Mar 12, 2020

At this world's end enter


a city, a butterfly house

where lives, frail, urgent

wing together in colour;

Swirl on pushing lusheng

currents, pulsing to beats

from earth's electric root.

Guan, guan

the Ospreys cry

Hey sexy lady!


Spring,their bud, their now,

They, the butterfly women,

till they fly from mothers,

flutter free from fathers

grasping partners by luck

from the cycles of hands;

Do they dance for a man?

or join a naive beauty;

The boughs in a breeze

weeds a-flutter in water,

the weathering of limbs~

a dance-hall elemental.



Guan, guan

the Ospreys cry

Gangnam Style!


Half in the blue celestial

of skies where a playful

sun caresses young kisses

across your lands of skin;

Half in the silvers selenic

of forests in moon shadows

curling in soft secrecies

the coomb of your thigh

오빤 강남 스타일


Each mother seasoned

through the ache, breach

and break of her birth;

By plough, blade in earth

by saw, tooth biting bark

has brought out from chance

her butterfly into the dance.

강남스타



Pin these wings, memory-thin

back into the mudded churn

of our clod-heavy mass of days,

till in a now of coming years

among a city of caged birds

crumpled men, singled in

silence, mingled in separations,

will observe loves lost forever

sing between mute iron bars.

Guan, guan

The Ospreys cry

Gangnam style.


'Guan, guan, the osprey cry ' refers to the Chinese poem 'Guan Ju' in the 7th century BCE 'Shi Jing'.


'The Song of the Butterfly Mother' is a traditional Miaozu creation myth.


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