Not even birds

You said you would, and now you’ve gone,
the plane a pinpoint in the blue,
the empty sky.

I watch the empty fill with birds
and cloud and all the clutter that
is not your face,

and all I hear is whistling wind
through wings and feathers, nothing sings,
a sleeper wails.

Sunlight is fragile flutter-touch,
the air adrift in memories
of when we were

ephemeral as butterflies,
jay-bright as purple emperors.
All I have left

is flitter-flutter, so much waste,
the time, the love, the passion spent
on butterflies,  

and nothing fills this emptiness
of sky and blue and flutter-touch,
not even birds.