All hail the monarch
who has fed for millennia
on the plant named for a Greek god
who could raise the dead,
teaching her body
to survive the bitter sap,
who glues her eggs
on the underside of a weed
to suckle toxic milk,
then flies away.
This is for the mother
who fashions herself into a dare,
flaunting orange wings
draped in black lace,
batting kohl-rimmed eyes at predators
whose talons would snatch crawling larvae,
pupae hanging by silky strands
her body a lesson
in protection:
eat me or my young
and you will sicken and die.
Mother of sacrifice and cycles,
whose mate succumbs in the act,
who will never know
her progeny—
whose great-great granddaughters
will bear a generation
with the power
to live eight times longer
and journey ten times farther:
3,000 miles
to overwinter in the oyamels,
roosting in the fragrant fir
of the praying tree,
and dreaming of flight.
—
Therese Gleason is author of three poetry chapbooks: Hemicrania (Chestnut Review, 2024); Matrilineal (Finishing Line, 2021; Honorable Mention, Jean Pedrick Chapbook Prize, New England Poetry Club); and Libation (co-winner, South Carolina Poetry Initiative Chapbook Competition, 2006). Her poetry, flash fiction, and essays appear in 32 Poems, Cincinnati Review, Indiana Review, Lunch Ticket, New Ohio Review, On the Seawall, Rattle, and elsewhere. Originally from Louisville, Kentucky, she teaches literacy to multilingual learners in central Massachusetts.
