Monarch Chronicles

"Sometimes words come hard, they resist me
till I pluck them from deep water like hooked fish;
sometimes they are birds soaring out of a cloud,
and I harvest lines neglected for a hundred generations"
   – Lu Ji, "Meditation"







5.


An incidental Monarch off in the distance
flitting from petals Compass to Compass
seeking the bold nectar of Zinnias.

The mind's eye is sweetened by the scene.
Dendrites electrified by the blazing pink.
The descent of the Monarch onto lush petal

like the trail of molecules flashing across
the broad unseeable bulb of the cosmos.
Words are seeds planted by stars.