Monarch Chronicles

"Men sleep. The cassia blossoms fall.
The spring night is still in the empty mountains.
When the full moon rises,
It troubles the wild birds.
From time to time you can hear them
Above the sound of the flooding waterfalls."
 –Wang Wei, "Bird and Waterfall Music"





From inside the prairie the last day of spring.
We walk through the old hip high plantings
seeking the whorled and swamp milkweed.
We push aside the waves of prairie like water.
A single rattlesnake master among the spiderwort,
among the goldenrod, the common St. John's,
stands as sharp as a head of green needles.
As we lean down to see if it is flowering
a monarch flits by at ten feet silent as a thief,
prairie dust snagged by luck on its black legs.