The Xerces Butterfly
By Gary Everly

The Xerces Butterfly swarmed no more
with the advent of nuclear war.
In the year 1943 the Xerces disappeared
from the wet sand dunes along the San Francisco shore.
A tiny Fuzzy furry fellow
no more than an inch or so big
the butterfly fell extinct
and at first no one noticed.
Those coastal butterflies were doomed
as the wet sandy shores
fell beneath the blades
of the industrial war machines,
earth scraped flat, and concrete poured
to build military factories.

Out on the dry and dusty desert plains
of New Mexico's white desert sands
they exploded the world's first nuclear bomb
about as far from the ocean as you can possibly be.
They nicknamed the explosion
"A Mushroom Cloud"
but it doesn't look like that to me,
its resemblance it seems,
is more like the fuzzy, furry ethereal coat
of a giant vengeful butterfly ghost.