cribbed from an email message to a dear friend

when i was heading home for the day, tired and weary from being awake for too long talking or listening to someone else talk about books -- or having my head in a book -- and being kept alert only through chemical means that drip slowly in brown liquid blobs from a machine that eats my money -- i saw a small brownish red butterfly on a lilac colored flower. i only saw it for an instant as the wind blew my hair across my eyes and i became distracted again by those brief irritating moments that fill up the living of life. but it was real and wonderful and alive -- the way it stayed poised on the tip of the flower's head -- even against the strong mid-western winds -- and it reminded me that it's okay to hold on to even the things that i can't see and that are sometimes hard to believe in.