Dragon to Butterfly

It was early September in Lincoln, Nebraska Two friends were conversing at dusk on a porch One was all wrapped up in blankets and pillows The other an old overcoat Affection was easy to witness between them The physical closeness, the tender exchange The one in the coat gently stroking the other Who struggled but managed to talk just the same He said "Do you remember the day we met, Michael I heard you were coming and I called many times I didn't want someone like you to move in here I wasn't used to your kind But instead of returning my ignorant curses You just kept on answering the phone And you knocked on my door with a bucket of chicken The first time you came to my home." The two men were laughing now, shaking their heads With a sense of the passage about to take place "Larry, if someone had said we'd be friends I'd have called them insane to their face But you can't always tell what's inside of an apple And you can't always trust what you see." And Michael continued to wonder out loud After Larry had drifted to sleep How a man can move mountains, a world can be turned And the greatest of distances easily spanned When the strength that's invested in making a fist Is transformed into shaking a hand Michael helped Larry back into the house And then Michael's wife Julie helped Larry to bed A life-long diabetic confined to a wheelchair He couldn't do much for himself any more So they'd taken him in to unravel the pain How his father made fun of him, planting the seed And the root of the anger that grew so completely Once strangled his heart like a weed But a man can move mountains, a world can be turned And the greatest of distances easily spanned When the strength that's invested in making a fist Is transformed into shaking a hand Larry's last breath in his bedroom at Michael's Came later that night with his friend at his side "Thank you" was all he could whisper "for changing A dragon to a butterfly" For Larry was once a White Knight, a Grand Dragon With robes and with torches, with scorn and with hate And Michael the Rabbi who'd just moved to Lincoln With two open arms and with faith That a man can move mountains, a world can be turned And the greatest of distances easily spanned When the strength that's invested in making a fist Is transformed into shaking a hand