Catch and Release
for L.M.B.
I celebrate her kindness to God’s homely creatures
To each crawling, buzzing, darting thing of nature
Drawn into our home on this warm August night
By mesmerizing, unnatural household light
She acknowledges the strangeness of these tiny beings
How foreign their ways, how foreign their feelings
But what she sees, what she has always seen
Is the sameness, for all things, of suffering
It is this intimation of terror and pain
That guides her empathetic hands
In a precise catch and release
Mindful of fragile antennae and wings.
Geoff Budden lives in St John's, Newfoundland & Labrador, Canada, where he practices law. He is the father of two young adult daughters, the elder of whom is the subject of this poem, and has had poems published in Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, Ireland and the United States. Geoff can be found on Twitter at @GeoffBudden
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