WEBVTT

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Sometimes, sometimes my
fears are tempered by hope.

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But then there's
always these specters.

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Right?

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That I just can't seem to shake.

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I can share them.

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I can't shake them.

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"The Blue."

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"One will live to see
the caterpillar rot

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everything they walk on.

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Seacliff, buckwheat cleared,
relentless ice plant

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to replace it.

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The wild fields bisected
by scenic highway,

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canyons covered with
cul de sacs, gas

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stations, comfortable homes.

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The whole habitat along this
coastal stretch endangered.

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Everything, everyone, everywhere
in it in danger as well.

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But now, they're logging the
one stilling hawk Smith sights.

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The conspiring grasses.

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Shh, shh, shh.

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The coreopsis Mattoni's
boot barely spares.

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And netted, a solitary
blue butterfly.

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Smith, ahead of him,
chasing the stream,

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Mattoni wonders if he
plans to swim again.

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Just like that,
the spell breaks.

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It's years later.

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Mattoni lecturing on his
struggling butterfly.

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How fragile.

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If his daughter
spooled out the fabric

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she's chosen for
her wedding gown,

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raw taffeta burled
a bright hued tan,

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perhaps Mattoni would remember
how those dunes looked

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from a distance.

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The fabric balanced
between her arms,

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making valleys in the valley.

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The fan above her,
mimicking the breeze.

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He and his friend
loved everything,

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softly undulating
under the coyest wind,

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and the rough truth as they
walked through the land,

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scratch and scrabble.

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And no one was there then,
besides Mattoni and his friend,

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walking along Dolan's Creek
in that part of California

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they hated to share.

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The ocean, a mile or so off.

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Anything but passive, so
that even there in the canyon

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they sometimes heard it smack
and pull well-braced rocks.

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The breeze basic, salty,
bitter, sour, sweet.

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Smith trying to
identify the scent,

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tearing leaves of manzanita
yelling, 'This is it.

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Here, this is it.'

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His hand to his nose,
his eyes having finally

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seen the source of
his pleasure alive.

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In the lab after
the accident, he

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remembered it, the butterfly.

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How good a swimmer
Smith had been.

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How rough the currents
there at Half Moon Bay.

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His friend alone
with reel and rod,

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Mattoni back at school
early that year.

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His summer finished too soon.

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Then all of them together
in the sneaker wave,

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and before that the ridge.

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Congregations of pinking
blossoms and one of them

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bowing, scaring up the living,
the frail and flighty beast too

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beautiful to never be pinned.

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Those nights Mattoni
worked without his friend,

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he remembered too.

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He called the butterfly
Smith's Blue."