Monarch

Their honeycomb-wings radiate the sweet taste of summer, feather-light, wind-strong, a scattering of snowflakes to remind us what's coming. They eat the threads that held them in darkness, push off from the sturdy milkweed leaf, fly toward the rainbow in the light, its imperceptible shades. Never forgetting the darkness, or how to be still, they gather, hardly fluttering, taking in whatever the goldenrods and purple coneflowers offer: bright colors, fragrant nectar, a place to rest. They lay their seeds, die in the brush, each day on the prairie the sigh from a great, ancestral longing. Or else, if they were born to the right generation, they fly faster than gravel-road drivers, scattering, gathering again. Soundless, they know how to find one another by shadow and light, huddle like calves in a windstorm, birds in a nest.

The trees of their great-grandmothers await. Deep in the thin walls that hold honeycomb from honeycomb, in the feathery antennae, in the small, white circles of memory, they know the way. They follow the light as it rises, recedes, 2,500 miles toward home.