Monarch By John C. Mannone

The chrysalis glitters like blown glass
hanging from a Christmas tree. Sun sifts it.

Transforms the fragile bulb to an orange-laced
black with enamel-white spots—patterned silk.

One hundred million unfold: a royal symmetry
of Monarchs that marathon toward the sacred

slopes of Sierra Madres two thousand miles away.
But many are netted and jabbed by spiders, snagged

in claws of cats or pincer’d by birds’ beaks.
There is no forgiveness, there is no gentle rain

when it pelts them to the ground, wings folded
in prayer as they are flushed into gutters. I hear

their screams, the spirits of Popoluca Indians
crying for refuge this day, dia de los muertos,

seeking the deep green sanctuary. The forest
umbrellas the survivors on their warm trunks.

They cloister among the leaves of oyamel firs
to mourn; flower clusters at the foot of graves.

But in the spring, they resurrect, unfurl wings
to catch the spilt sun. Waves of butterflies bloom

into flight and wash north to the Great Lakes
fulfilling their legacy. In ritual, each generation

flitters closer to home, but dies, until the fourth,
born to carry the spirits of the dead once more.