"Death of a Monarch"

 

(Monarch butterfly in 'Longwood Gardens', Pennsylvania)

 

 

It's good to see, borne on the same wiry wing,

  both flight and an aery death—

 

Straying beyond impassioned needlefloors,

  wind-coarsened,

a butterfly still thinks it's good to be: a Monarch,

  alone, high as angels,

and even as she flies, the lone spectral sunspeck

   of my eye,

and dies unambiguously in my dream

 

For catching a poppy sun late, she raises fairylands

  wherever wings go,

& wing for wing she's the equal of any avifauna,

  vivific and bright!

Or even as a noon's lone rover, a last sweep

  into dusk, this queen's akin

 

to noonshades, too, as if she fell trying to beat back

  a rigid bark-cold

or a cruel rasping petal-heat: death on some cleft leaf!

  But see her (as I did!)

hop from out some doddered spider tree, tangled,

  spun on day's filthy dreck,

 

& rising tempestuously, loosing into worlds! Look!

  Seer to the azalea, pearly-cute,

just there as she's about to fade flaring into night, quiet,

  becoming breath,

and winging a phantasmal virginal flight into reeds.

  Moonshades to soften a fall.