The butterfly's pledge

We were butterflies, for a time.

Our Saltires were our wings.
Our sunlit banners flew
in the kingdoms of the air.
We were proud custodians
of the highest hopes.

We were free, for a time,
and shared a common joy.
The bright summer sun rose high 

over George Square, which, for a time,
we made the precinct of the unicorn.

We were butterflies.

But now winter approaches.

A chill breeze stiffens our wings,
made heavy, turned to blades of ice,
and gravity takes its toll.
Other colours are laid
over and upon our flag.
Our bright hopes decline
like the winter sun.

We walk among the sepulchres
of our illustrious predecessors
to find that humble, remote, 

unmarked plot
where we can inter Hope.

In the summer
the tombstones themselves
seemed to have thawed 
and been transformed
by our high hopes
into bright pillars of light,
to mark the historic threshold
where heroes of the future and the past 

would finally meet

in the accomplishment of a common dream

Now our hearts,
which throbbed so fast together
within the shared rhythms 

of the summer sun,
are themselves turned to silent
still snow-capped stones,
isolated from each other
in the graveyard of Hope
We find we have become
the mute monuments
we ourselves visited
only yesterday.

We speak now
only with the whispered voice of ghosts
to those who cannot understand
our grief and desolation.
Once we hoped
to loudly summon
a new and better future,
a brave new reality.
Cold winds sweep and heap 

our whispers together in drifts

to be casually ploughed aside
by all we once stood firmly against.

But we can still raise
even the faintest voice
and make an iron pledge.

Even if no-one else will hear
we can make it to ourselves.

And if heard all together
those voices will form a shout,
a howl, a resounding holler
that cannot be ignored. 

Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
We will retrieve the orb of hope we bury today,
once our grief passes beyond the winter solstice,
and breathe upon it and polish it with our sleeves

until it shines with renewed brightness,
and proudly carry and care for it once more.

These butterflies can rise again
on razor wings, and escape
from all nets cast against them.
They will find their erratic way
through every detour and collision
and they will achieve their destiny.

And as the snows of winter melt
beneath the refulgent sun,
the chrysalis will crack,
and we will see
a new generation of butterflies
resting upon the tombs
of last year's hopes
before taking to the air once more.