mudpuddlers

butterflies grovel finding salt on a sunday colours belie blue butterflies dung beetles feed on cowpat dainty and delicate gradations of blue oak ash dissolves in water indigo dye feathered acrobatics bare wisteria branches goldcrest entertains born from a spark we are the dust of the stars the fire of the stars

Butterflies mudpuddling in the field, helping themselves to salt and other minerals. These butterflies, so dainty and delicate, behave like dungbeetles on a cowpat. Is this antithesis or juxtaposition? Juxtaposition is just the adjacent placement of two (or more) dissimilar concepts. Antithesis is more specific — it’s the placement of two concepts that are not only dissimilar, but polar opposites. An antithesis is used when the writer employs two sentences of contrasting meanings in close proximity to one another. Whether they are words or phrases of the same sentence, an antithesis is used to create a stark contrast using two divergent elements that come together to create one uniform whole.

Written for a prompt at CarpeDiem