Poem Eight: Monarch/Danaus plexippus

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Don’t apply pesticides

to open flowers.

A devastating scene: 

a cacophony of dead and dying 

monarch butterflies scattered 

across the lawn.

Milkweed, sea-foam, chrysalis—  

symbolic fluttering memes  

of hope—

extinct in the next 50 years.

What is your carbon footprint

if you can’t trace it in the sand?

Nectar and desire, 

a pull of intuition 

and magnetism, 

a pilgrimage 

over prairies, highways, 

wetlands, the milky smoke

of skyscrapers—

swaths of brush-footed butterflies

become single fluttering 

waves of being—

I stand in the grove 

and weep.

Does good always return?

We are small disappearing figures

in the corner of a painting

our eyes closed 

to the blasting

scorch of the sun.

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