Thousands of monarchs chase something beyond us
Across our freeway -- they have no home,
No place, no time. Their music of the air
Is not like the music in the car: Paralytic,
Climate managed -- the edge taken off -- terms of surrender
Dangled from a vampire wand as stereo contentment
Temporary as heroin, and interrupted by cell bars
On the dashboard for minor key emergencies.
They fly like they've always been here -- they seem to fold
Into the sky -- hovering in ambrosia -- in no great hurry to arrive
In Oregon from Mexico, they change direction on a whim,
Pause to drink the micro-variances of wind
As our mobile prisons stay lock-stutter in their lanes,
As fixed as planets in their tracks -- we can't even cross
The yellow lines to make our exit ramps.
They ride the whirlpools to rise like paper ash closer to the sun
As if on a wand of mind to spread all experience of flight
Across the countryside -- so free of each other but never apart.
We who so despise the solitude of cars we crave the open highway
Look on these rainbow shadows as a less-than-kind invasion,
A nose-thumbing migration parading what we've
Forgotten how to be
-- All we remember is a net and pins
And wings that could be admired
Inside a glass display
-- How we could once
Approximate them to our being.
