Butterfly Kisses
Evening cools, monarchs pause, feign a lazy flight
as though they were breathing with their wings.
They meld onto the branches, strand themselves,
slowly work themselves to foliage, a royal drab,
a camouflage.
Think of wintering.
Bay breeze rustles them as it whispers up the hill,
while they hug each other and the Monterey pines,
hide into the Spanish moss, again, until morning’s
sun-heavy shafts remind them they can fly.
Yellow noise of sunrise opens, stretches wings,
moves them to the speed of breath. Then,
one by one, they fall away, glide, weigh
against air, against blue, sometimes,
against gray, against white, sometimes.
This is the moment when a single monarch reigns,
fluttering, floating, drifting, darting,
stroking wisps of light and air,
flying as if it had lost its way home.
Powdered wings caress, then kiss, the edges of a breeze.
Artisian breezes caress, then kiss monarch wings. Butterfly and breeze pair together.
Eyelashes tease the edges of my neck. And I remember:
Maren’s lashes kissed me once that way, or was it twice?
Erik kissed me that way once or was it more?
Now, I will be kissed that way again by Matthias.
The green Manitoba milkweed will protect us all
as we make our journey home between the suns.
-- Pacific Grove, December 2000
Though raised in Utah, Eggertsen has been going to Pacific Grove and watching the monarchs for more than fifty years. And he was "militarized" at Fort Ord in the 1960s. He has recently come to poetry and is winner of the Irreantum Poetry Prize, 2012. His works have been published in Nimrod, Atlanta Review, Ekphrasis, New Millennium Writings and Weber: The Contemporary West, anthologized in Fire in the Pasture (2011).
Next:
Evening cools, monarchs pause, feign a lazy flight
as though they were breathing with their wings.
They meld onto the branches, strand themselves,
slowly work themselves to foliage, a royal drab,
a camouflage.
Think of wintering.
Bay breeze rustles them as it whispers up the hill,
while they hug each other and the Monterey pines,
hide into the Spanish moss, again, until morning’s
sun-heavy shafts remind them they can fly.
Yellow noise of sunrise opens, stretches wings,
moves them to the speed of breath. Then,
one by one, they fall away, glide, weigh
against air, against blue, sometimes,
against gray, against white, sometimes.
This is the moment when a single monarch reigns,
fluttering, floating, drifting, darting,
stroking wisps of light and air,
flying as if it had lost its way home.
Powdered wings caress, then kiss, the edges of a breeze.
Artisian breezes caress, then kiss monarch wings. Butterfly and breeze pair together.
Eyelashes tease the edges of my neck. And I remember:
Maren’s lashes kissed me once that way, or was it twice?
Erik kissed me that way once or was it more?
Now, I will be kissed that way again by Matthias.
The green Manitoba milkweed will protect us all
as we make our journey home between the suns.
-- Pacific Grove, December 2000
Though raised in Utah, Eggertsen has been going to Pacific Grove and watching the monarchs for more than fifty years. And he was "militarized" at Fort Ord in the 1960s. He has recently come to poetry and is winner of the Irreantum Poetry Prize, 2012. His works have been published in Nimrod, Atlanta Review, Ekphrasis, New Millennium Writings and Weber: The Contemporary West, anthologized in Fire in the Pasture (2011).
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