There Are Less Butterflies Now

[matsunosuperfan]

I wish I had more memories of nature to draw upon
But there are less butterflies now
And it was too hot to go outside.
As a child, I chose
Binoculars and a microscope as my prize
For all those long days
Doing math problems indoors
With these instruments in my hands,
I looked about,
and realized I had nothing around me with which to make music.
I sat back down in my chair
And continued reading notes instead,
As my tongue prodded the gap in my gums,
Where a tooth used to be.

By way of suggestion, I can't resist offering a liberal reconfiguration of your verse:

--
For all those long days doing math 
problems indoors, I chose binoculars
and a microscope. Even as a child, 

I knew the truth was far away and 
only visible transformed. Looking down
at my small hands holding these budding

instruments, I saw that I still had no way 
of making music, so I sat back in my chair
and kept at reading notes instead, while 

my tongue prodded the strange new gap
that bloomed between my gums. What wouldn't
I give for more fragments of nature to zoom

in on, capture in slides, translate as quarter 
notes, shape into song? But I stayed indoors,
where it was not too hot for butterflies. 
--

Just to show concept, of course   I admire the associative liberties our speaker is taking! It's nice to see a poem that isn't hogtied to linear narrative. That said, the poem is SHORT and the theme is not immediately obvious, all of which is fine but does put added pressure on the work to suggest a broader coherence. At present, this draft may leave readers with a little too much work to do putting meat on the bones - the risk is the poem ends up kind of feeling like a riddle or something that is evocative but frustratingly obscure.

Now maybe my little reworking here swings too far in the other direction - I basically just shoehorned some suggestive philosophy in there by way of random declaratives like "the truth is only visible when far away and transformed." But at least it solves the problem of the poem feeling a bit unmoored from sense and "meaning." Also think adding stanza breaks and more intentional shape immediately helps this poem have more appeal on the page (though I have also been playing with the "paragraph" form lately and do admire it in general, I think the disjoint stream of consciousness here benefits more from lineation - to me, this visually suggests that there will be gaps between images and gestures that need to be connected by implication). 

There are a number of really compelling images here - the association of butterflies with a certain kind of weather is weirdly specific and very provocative. Ditto the prodded gum / missing tooth. But what am I to DO with these interesting gestures? They don't seem to attach to or resonate directly with any of the other lines, so I'm left with a feeling that the speaker knows more than I do about their significance. That's fine, but I think you could give your reader just a little more to "go off of." 

The poem feels real and lived-in which is a great base to work from. It doesn't feel put on or artificial or derivative, so kudos for being original in your expression. For revision I would focus on holding the language to a higher standard, as some of it is a bit flat and could easily be made more musical or inventive, and developing a clearer focus on whatever you take the poem's subject to be. At present the occasion seems clear enough - reminiscing on childhood school days - but I feel pretty lost as to identifying the reason these things hold such significance for the speaker in this moment. What links butterflies and hot weather and science instruments and making music and loosing a tooth, for this speaker? We don't need to be told step-by-setp but perhaps the poem could offer us just a bit more connective tissue there, and in the process, become even more convincingly more than the sum of its parts.

(sorry if this is not "basic" critique, I kinda only know 1 way to crit which is at length)