April is National Poetry Month. Typically, I celebrate by sharing poetry with my blog followers. If ambitious enough, I will be posting a new poem each day for the remainder of April. Below you will find a poem I wrote in the Spring of 2016 after searching archived National Geographic Magazine articles for a teacher who wanted to do a lesson on butterflies.
I am a Monarch Butterfly. I was a mere larvae a few days ago. Just hatched from my chrysalis this morning. I looked up toward the tree top and started climbing,
Climbing, climbing, finally reaching the top of the giant tree.
The sunlight was bright and overwhelming.
When I first saw the others, there were more than a dozen, and my enthusiasm grew with their numbers. It took a few minutes to realize the extent of what I was seeing. One hundred of my fellow cousins fluttering against a blue sky, wing tips touching. Simply breathtaking.
Seeing one million Monarchs swerving and soaring above me,
Realizing there were more in the trees waiting for the right moment
to open their wings and join us,
Felt like nothing short of a miracle.
I looked below as a woman cocked her head to the sky, cupping her hands
behind her ears. The husband leaned over and whispered, “Listen.” His bride grinned from ear-to-ear as she heard the butterflies flapping their wings
Against the air, sounding like a rainstorm falling on verdant forest.
Suddenly, thousands of butterflies above me began to let go of the branches they’d been desperately clinging to and poured into the sky;
I felt the wind from their wings as they soared around me.
I got lost in the swirling kaleiodoscope pattern they made against the sun.
I know butterflies aren’t noted for emotion, but I was filled with an inexplicable surge of energy that made me want to laugh and cry at the same time. We looked like orange confetti setting the sky ablaze. At about two hundred yards above the tree, we all turned right and headed to North America, where summer awaits.
The Accidental Apologist 