migrating monarchs
ignite blue air into fussy flame,
festoon thousands of miles
with lilting orange,
before releasing their wings
to tumble across the Mojave.

when i walk the desert,
braving heat waves
to detach from time,
i see not unfed gulches,
not pockmarks of scrub,
but butterfly ghosts
scrawling like obsessed writers.

it�s just a matter of forgetting the present
(which has no lifespan anyway)
and grasping the sum
of every monarch wing
that meandered across desolation.

it then becomes obvious
that fragile triangles
have left a blazing testimony,
that the dunes swarm
with vivid psalms.



�2006 by Chris Crittenden
~Originally published in Poetry Depth Quarterly