A white butterfly
bewitched into the city
finds a hidden flower
growing in a crack of a grey stone
on Handan Lu Lane.
A gray-haired street peddler,
a daughter of Guanyin,
stops her heavy cart to see
the flutter of a flower
and the bright wing
of an urban butterfly.
Allan Scherlen’s early life was spent in San Antonio, Texas where he was a caretaker of birds and follower of tales. As life progressed, Scherlen travelled in Mexico and China and became a faculty librarian at Appalachian State University in western North Carolina.
