Caryn Lazzuri

MONARCHS

The edge of your brain opened underwater
when the riptide drug you past the breakers.

I could see you from the shore; your drowning
was slow motion, a paper butterfly buffeted

by wind. But then the ocean burped you up.
You swam in, exhausted. When we woke

in the morning, the monarchs were migrating,
thousands of them lighting on rafters

along the shore of Cape May. I had thought
of your helpless arms as wings, but I know now

those insects are machines—determined mass
of whispering, nothing at all like paper.

Not at all like drowning. Indelicate,
and terrifying, they rage forward in a silent swarm

as if the going home were no journey, no survival,
but the one thing they were made for.

–from Rattle 29, Summer 2008