What Is Freed

Most memories aren’t ours.
They’re pinned like butterflies
On fading calendars.

Someone can tell you when.
You can read someone’s tale
As someone else told it.

You’ve lived with words so long,
Since you started to walk,
It feels like any one

Of them you understand
Well-phrased belongs to you,
But you know it’s not true.

Some butterflies are prized.
Extinct type specimens
Are locked up and precious.

Some phrases are taboo,
Or don’t belong to you,
Or shouldn’t be abused.

I am thinking on this
As I sit on a stone
With my hoard of phrases,

While a butterfly feeds
On a cactus flower
And worlds recede from me.