Celeste’s Butterfly
She is looking down on a city
through chicken wire and it’s
a long way down in this neighborhood
that has seen better days.
It could have been New York or Chicago
or New Orleans, what she sees
is timeless and suggests a reason
why she is framed in this window
thinking of a better life.
Is she confined for acts against
society? Is she a child of the street
gone mad recovering from a drug
odyssey that last saw her screaming
into the face of a statue of Moses
in a Washington Park or is she
an orphan of the night doing sixty
days for selling her soul on the street
for a quick fix and a night out
on the town. The butterfly tattooed
on her arm near the shoulder is
breaking free, revealed now that
her shirtsleeve is rolled up;
we know nothing of Celeste and we
know everything. She is trapped
behind a screened in wall of her
life waiting for what time cannot release.
Alan Catlin worked for the better part of 34 years in his unchosen profession as a barman in and around the greater Albany, NY area. He has published dozens of chapbooks and full-length books focusing on his work and the people he met while laboring in the trenches of bar warfare.
