I’d made the drive a hundred times
I’d had no coffee for months
Except today
The cup saving me from
Drowsy death on Highway 5
Mid sip the flutter caught my attention
The orange and black quiver cutting
The comforting smell of flat white 
It was probably a Painted Lady
It made me sad
I refocused on the road
Noticing now, for the first time
Today 
That I looked through a hundred splats
Or more
Thwap
Another one
Added to the mass grave of my windshield.
I’m just seeing this now? 
Good, God
How have I been able to see the road
Fuck.  
Now I can’t see anything else
Just various blots of opaque to yellow to green
Some of them were literally 
Right in front of my eyeballs
But only now in focus.  
What made the butterfly register
When these hundred dead gnats did not?
It’s color maybe. 
The violent shake that pulled it 
Out of the peripheral
Or did I connect better to its
Narrative of metamorphosis & change
Did I see myself like that and so could see her?
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about death
And hope
But more about death
My mother always bitched at me 
To clean my windshield before I drove
To wash it all away 
So nothing would hinder my view 
To where I was going
That straight line of the 5
Straight and easy all the way
No need to complicate things 
So little like those tiny black lives.