Two Flights

I wrote this poem about 30 years ago after learning about monarch migration:

Monarchs

Aloft with monarch

            butterflies heading

to Mexico   dense

                        sheets of velvet

crowd me orange

            black    the wings

soft and heavy

            brushing my flesh

no butterfly cries

                        but repeated wingthuds

            and creaking joints

patches of wingdust

                        perfuming the air

My flock surges

                        faster than clouds

            wings and startling

wings    heads wisely

                                    small   all eyes

and tongue   brown

                                    shriveled trunks

they

            tolerate my heavy

                        pink laboring flight

they conceal me

                        we become

                                      a butterflycloud

huge as a lake

                        When I start

to tumble    unthinking

                                    wings pummel me

            aloft      is it

the rustle lifting

                        me or vibrations

of color above

                        the invisible earth

Larvae fed only

            on milkweed soured

                        us to the taste

of birds

                 Each

abandoned chrysalis shiny

                        greengold speckled

            dried in sun

to blow away

                        as wind-dust

Seventeen mariopa trees

            await us

            When I read this in class, a student (who knew) asked me, “Were you going through a divorce when you wrote this?”

            “Yes.”

            “So maybe you felt a lot of support when you were going through all the changes?”

            I’d never thought of those changes as having any bearing on the poem. I hope that student went on to teach English.

                                                             * * * * 

            This poem is more recent. When we lived in Gainesville, our dining room looked out onto the edge of Paynes Prairie State Park. In the poem I imagine a flight that Kim might be imagining:

                      

The Flight

From your seat before the window you

lift from your chair and take flight

over Paynes Prairie – low at first,

skimming the barbed wire fence,

avoiding the still vacant blue bird house,

then gliding free, twisting over the grasses.

Startled egrets cock their heads

to look up, and sandhill cranes, yes,

crane their necks to see and cry their

raucous welcome to you, the newcomer.

You glide on silent wings over ponds

and marshes, the morning mists lifted,

the sun warm and golden, the breeze

strangely still. You lift yourself on soft

powerful wings, pass the stoic kestrel

standing sentinel on a leafless tree as

meadowlarks rise in alarm, gather, scatter,

and reassemble again in the grasses.

A great blue heron approaches and veers

away. You circle toward distant

                                                       

trees edging the prairie, but no, in a graceful

turn you swerve back toward the house and me,

my coffee frozen inches from my lips, watching,

transfixed, my wife who was suddenly not

at my side eating breakfast. You skim low over

the reeds to check for frogs, then spy the bulls

ambling into the prairie and can’t resist bothering

them into a small stampede. You swoop

through our window, settle into your chair,

smooth your feathers, and nibble your toast.