While learning French in Quebec City in 1962, I was encouraged by my professor, Jacques Thibault, to write some simple poems using the vocabulary I was learning. I was reading Charles Baudelaire's poetry at the time. It occurred to me his name contained the words “beau de l'aire” - in English, you whose essence is of the air. I reflected on this idea and recalled running over a butterfly, once, with a lawnmower. The bits of the butterfly flew up into the air, sparkling in the sunlight. Charles Baudelaire died ignominiously…poor and unnoticed. When I wrote this poem, a friend of Jacques, Robert Williams, read it and painted the watercolor image to accompany it.