Chestnut Charlie Butterfly Soldier

It is the secret of the world that all things subsist and do not die, but only retire a little from sight and afterward return again.

-Ralph Waldo Emerson

Charlie is ten, but I suspect he’s lived before. There is no telling what his past lives were like, if he was a prophet or a peasant or a tulip or whatever, but I get the feeling he has been here many …