Monarch Butterfly

Devouring the fluted transparent
dome from which it came, then
milkweed—sequestering heart-
toxins against predation;
becoming a tigerish tube, intimate
with the opacity of green …
Sealed now in a crystal womb that
grew inside caterpillar skin
it remakes itself: imaginal buds convert
each cell till webbed patterns
press through film studded with glints
of golden rain. In darkness, a sudden
tearing, the body making its descent,
pumping blood to straighten
wings that will cross continents
in a host masking the sun,
shroud revisted trees with fragments
of stained glass, a baroque lichen,
burnt-orange leaves that will outlast
winter. The return to origins
is in a relay of generations—an imprint
of memory indelible as black veins.
I look down at a curated flame bereft
of the third dimension.
Nearby, the viceroy's counterfeit—
innocent of poison,
incapable of epics, yet a brilliant
rival flaunting its stolen
immunity. Ego, alter ego, they co-exist,
each a singleness in
multiplicity, as still as they were wont
to be in life when
about to fly off, or having just
alighted on an afternoon drenched with pollen.