To a Monarch butterfly seen in 'Longwood Gardens', Pennsylvania

It's good to see, borne on the same savior wing, both flight and an airy death— Beyond the impassioned spiny needle floors coarsened by winds, it's still good to be a butterfly, alone, on a high Rose, and even flying, the lone spectral flyspeck of my eye, and even dying, an unambiguously autumn Monarch Happily, as even cool petals will catch on the poppy sun, she rises, a fairy place where’er she goes, & wing for wing is the equal of any avifauna, vivific & bright! Or she flecks like the day’s partial outer, blurring into dusk that she’s akin to And the moon shades too,-as if they were ever caught laying their rigid needle-cold or dragon-fear!- portend death only as a flash or jaggy leaf. But we find her come from out some doddered spider tree, tangled still & spun on the day’s filthy dreck, still our autumn Queen Til she rises sure,loosening new into worlds- and look! she’s seer to acacias and the pearly bees, just there as she's about to fade and spread into non-being , as wings turn virginal again, and again. As if moon shades fell for her, too!

(2009)