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