Richard,

> Thanks for the good word.  Actually, what I sent you was a small version of a
much larger hypertext of Butterfly poems.  This big, book version has 125
pieces, and while I hope the writing is better, I have been operating in this
project under the premise that the individual "poem-lets" need not stand alone
but must be taken severally in a reader-directed sequence in order to achieve a
poetic quality.  Perhaps Tao Te Butterfly is too small to achieve the "Butterfly
effect" -- which my test readers seemed to enjoy.

125 pieces!  I can see how that could be a different experience entirely.

> The large collection is seeking a publisher now, and I'll let you know what
happens.

Yes, I'd love to see the whole thing some day.

> I promise not to flood you with unwanted submissions, but since you were kind
enough to invite more of my work, I've included three "one-liners" below.  As
always, I hope you enjoy the read.

Oh, please do flood us with submissions!  I'd love for us to be getting more
stuff in.  As for the three poems you sent, I'd definitely like to accept the
last one, "How It All Began".  I also liked the start and end of "Monday", the
whole circular structure, but I feel it sags in the middle, perhaps because of
the effort to sustain the single sentence.  (By the way, do you read C.K.
Williams?  He writes these poems with long lines that often end up being poems
with long extended sentences.  I feel that he was only successful at this for a
brief time, perhaps through two books -- I wish I could claim as much! -- in
which he walks the tightrope exquisitely, then his verse fades to prosaic
flatness.  Though your voice is nothing like Williams', you face similar
technical problems in these poems.)



        Monday

        My watch, which shows the wrong day of the week,
        was fixed, I dreamed, leaving me sure today
        is Monday and that it's been snowing since dawn,
        no, ten when I woke and a great hawk landed
        among the insanely bent branches of the locust tree
        outside my window where I'd never seen such
        large tail feathers, except maybe on crows,
        no longer worrisome, though here was an omen,
        or embarrassment, dwelling out of place
        in town when there are more stubble fields
        surrounding town than I could ever want, although
        it takes only minutes to think about them all
        and know there aren't many hawks anymore
        like mine that flew, apparently, while I showered
        and checked my teeth, browned by coffee, of which
        by noon I'd had enough and enough time to recall
        there are many colors, that I can make more coffee
        but I can't make teeth, and that I ought to open a book,
        which I did and didn't like, preferring my green armchair
        to a book touching on truth, since they all do,
        while my chair has a white doily on the backrest
        like my mother's and my grandmother's, one of whom
        taught me that Mondays have existed for centuries, snow
        even longer, and that to close a book, even a bad one,
        can take all afternoon, which is true enough for me,
        not because I'm a slow reader, but one who enjoys his mistakes
        and is entirely willing to wait until dark for realizations
        such as my realization this evening that a hawk
        had flown many miles high over corn stubble,
        bean stubble, looking for something, until the bright night
        swelled around him, leaving it up to me alone
        to assert the day, Monday, and the correct time,
        though I can prove neither and maybe this morning,
        trusting in dreams, it was snowing while I dreamed.



        Spark

        If I started writing poetry now--no, as a boy--but only wrote
           one line, one long line that went on and on telling stories
           about the seasons, the passage of years and the raw drama
           of life and tragedy swallowed in the drifting mists of
           forgetfulness like the tale of woe that once befell a well-
           loved friend who could always laugh near birch and willow
           in fall color by a finger of the lake and always could lend
           a serious ear to beer-sipping grievers in bars until one
           day when he died in an unusual way which involved not a
           passing of the spirit from the body but a more gradual,
           step by step, Mel Bay Easy Guitar method of dying or almost
           disappearing over a hill like a lone walker moving on
           slowly in the dust and distance down a country road with
           ditches filled with wildflowers and insects thriving on the
           heat of the sun and pollens on the breeze from weeds and
           sweetheart cornfields in their youth sending word and
           whispering, whispering so loud they must know I can hear
           them and might describe their nervous skirts before I'm
           dead and forgotten, might raise my head and take the pen in
           a life-long grip, might carve the names and faithful doings
           of everyone I've loved or tried to love in the bark of
           trees away from the path by the lake in the drunken hope
           that their wisdom will outlive mine and may someday find
           the spark in my long musing--no matter when I started, no
           matter how much more I might say, no matter how long the
           line, the sentence, the breath, I could only begin with
           If, could only live life with that contingency, free to
           make each day, to choose where to walk, where to look, whom
           to love, but never able to know the end, never to know what
        then.



        How It All Began

        It was long ago when the world was somewhat
        flatter
        that the first farmer gave up growing
        rope
        in order to cultivate rats, charmed by the dears
        hustling
        to make the earth a labyrinth, an unseen
        order
        of soil and chips of lightning driven
        cruelly
        down the path of most resistance up
        straight
        into untouched air where the drill bits turned
        molten
        but not too soon, for the blood and rust machine
        shook
        and all at once a hundred million differentials
        meshed
        and up stood civilization on its own hind legs
        yowling
        for the flash and tonnage of razor cathedrals
        tumbled
        in the battle-lit night of smoke and flame
        cheerless
        as chaos and the grim expectation of the last
        command
        which, when it came, split open the planetary
        skull
        out of which cracked pot invisible consciousness
        grew,
        sent levers to the base of the buried sun,
        lifted
        the mean god into life and everlasting
        misunderstanding
        to shine on the clouded dawn of ratkind,
        who,
        in ceremonious appreciation, gave the last farmer
        land
        flat enough to look like home, although it smelled
        infested.