Butterfly with Parachute by Stephen Burt

Mary

A real one wouldn't need one, 

but the one Nathan draws surely does: 

four oblongs the size and color of popsicles, 

green apple, toasted coconut and grape, 

flanked, two per side, by billowing valentine hearts, 

in a frame of Scotch tape. 

Alive, it could stay off the floor 

for a few unaerodynamic minutes; 

thrown as a paper airplane, for a few more.

Very sensibly, therefore, 

our son gave it something, not to keep it apart 

from the ground forever, but rather to make safe its

descent.  When we ask that imagination discover the limits

of the real 

world only slowly, 

maybe this is what we meant.