April 2011
Regarding the Green-Veined White
In May, I stood corrected: that’s not a cabbage,
it’s a green-veined white, the expert said,
the veins aren’t green at all, but
subtle blends of black and yellow scales.
I made a note and took a photograph.
My mistake to think romantic thoughts,
when the yellow-black, called green
but definitely not cabbage white,
flew off and left behind his perfect match,
immaculate if flat against the charlock.
That’s your female non-receptive mode,
the expert said, and launched himself into
an exposition on the ins and outs of
reproduction in the green-veined white, and,
by extension, every other member of
the order Lepidoptera. He paused,
before a footnote on Linnaeus
and the proper way to name all living things.
I felt enlightened, though a trifle numb
as if I had been chloroformed, until
I looked around, that Saturday in May,
and saw, pavilioned by the cobalt sky, the air,
from where I stood, to round the Wrekin
and beyond was dizzy with a million aerial pairs,
all wearing well the other names I know:
the bow-ties, motyl, day-flaps, hinges, ghosts,
and what I now could say for certain was
the butter-coloured, green-veined summer-flyer.
Published in ‘Shropshire Butterflies’, Fairacre Press, 2011
