Montauk Poetry Corner
by Lawrence Spiro

Montauk and the East End are often thought of in terms of beaches and sun, but this area is also laced with beautiful trails to bike run and stroll. I enjoy running on trails that are physically challenging, and offer satisfying vistas. A poem is an excellent medium to compare two incongruous things, and make a point. I have chosen myself and a “startling” bug. There have been other poems where a bug’s existence is analogous to human experience. For example, in “The Love Song of J.Alfred Prufrock,” T.S. Eliot (1888-1965) writes “When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall...” The butterfly in the ensuing poem reveals a loftier condition.

In this poem I use several poetic devices such as rhyme, alliteration, internal rhyme and imagery. I also include a made up word at the end of the poem. Scansion is a metric analysis of a poem. This poem is written in mostly iambic, disyllabic feet. The lines start with an unaccented syllable followed by an accented syllable.
If you have a poem you would like us to see, email it to me at larryspiro@aol.com. Include permission to publish if you are so inclined.

I Was Started by a Butterfly

At times the hour hand pushes
And the second hand drags slow.
We miss midnight’s twinkling
and noon’s sunny show.

I slid out of bed into the early morn
to run a trail that was barely worn.

Stress, like sweat, seeped out of me.
Running the trails with alacrity,

I was startled by a butterfly.

It floated in harmony with me
moving with staccato and whimsy.
It fluttered then blended into sight
playing with rays of morning light.

The monarch was not always a regal vision,
it ascended through a wondrous transition.

It swooned to a cocoon that depended,
on a metamorphosis that transcended.
a bug to an angel complete
with wings of tapestry where were feet.

I ran my run once again
to rejuvenate myself from without and within
Peeking the spot of the elusive butterfly
I jumped over a crawly thing, millistep by.