THE BUTTERFLY'S DAY by Emily Dickinson

From cocoon forth a butterfly
As lady from her door
Emerged - a summer afternoon -
Repairing everywhere,

Without design, that I could trace,
Except to stray abroad
On miscellaneous enterprise
The clovers understood.

Her pretty parasol was seen
Contracting in a field
Where men made hay, they struggling hard
With an opposing cloud,

Where parties, phantom as herself,
To Nowhere seemed to go
In purposeless circumference,
As’t were a tropic show.

And notwithstanding bee that worked,
And flower that zealous blew,
This audience of idleness
Disdained them from the sky,

Till sundown crept, a steady tide,
And men that made the hay,
And afternoon, and butterfly,
Extinguished in its sea.

After envisioning the sky as sea, the butterfly personified, let’s take a minute of silence to mourn 500,000 bats who have died from a fungus in their humble caves.