Life
continues
Expansive lawn luxuriates, bright and shadowed
and flowered
under lowing majestic willows.
Shadows touch the massive timber planter
bathed warm in humid late afternoon sun.
There -- on a willow twig something flutters;
then something else, unafraid, within reach,
then there and there!
Flutterings all around, on willow branches and
in gardens
Then flutters come alive, flitting and flashing…
monarch butterflies.
Stunning, by dozens, in sun sliced shade,
riotous colors surrounding, silently shouting,
flashing and floating, and living and loving,
together, oblivious to others, they dance and
lilt.
Resting, on their migration south.
Regal gram-weight travelers driven to move south
To Mexico and their whole species wintering
ground.
Resting now; then, urged on by millennia and
generations untold,
follow the sun; follow their compass,
in ways miraculous -- ungleaned by us -- they
find their way home.
Fare well.