To be one bee,
Hive's chaos sweeps and stuns you;
Still, honey results.

I reach to touch the perished hour,
And feel what once I knew.
How can I be what once I was?
Time pruned me as I grew.

The Folly of Seashell Collecting

Thanks to everyone concerned for the gold.

Here's the photo.

Crap, I forgot to check this week and missed a poetry event. Can't vote on it then, but I can still leave comments.

This was very lovely, and I somehow knew as soon as you mentioned a photo that it'd be this one. I don't have any suggestions for improvement. It's a nice commentary on how fleeting time can seem, and how such an image can stoke large swaths of memory in a couple specific people but be meaningless to most. Unlike most free verse (to me, at least), it feels like there's a natural flow in how it's structured and organized.

I'm a little confused about what this means, but the title alone suggests it's about a butterfly emerging from its cocoon and only having a short life as something beautiful. The last two stanzas sit easily with that idea, but the first is a lot harder to understand in that mold, and since it's what you're leading off with, that's what's setting the initial tone. Other than that, it's a nice message. Structurally, it adheres to haiku structure well (syllable count anyway, I've never gotten into some of the slight differences that those in the know will tell you makes it another form).

The rhythm takes a few liberties here and there, but the rhymes are clean.

Nice commentary that the words you leave behind are a representation of yourself, so you live on through them. Anyone who wants to retain your memory need only read them (or view pictures, listen to music, whatever other interests you had).