And suddenly, as if the air is charmed,
a monarch rises from the undertow
of gravity to sail to Mexico
on whitecaps of warm air. You stare, disarmed
by orange, muted by a startling swarm
of syncopated wings, the to and fro
of flutter. Face to face with vertigo
could you reset your threshold of alarm
and, catapulted by a wind god's gale,
trespass light-hearted on the cosmic lawn?
Could you be orange too, a whimsy blown
to cumulus heights? The butterflies don't quail.
As they ignite the sky with sparks of dawn
will you dare singe your wings on the unknown?
Nancy Kenney Connolly's work appears in the Asheville Poetry Review, Borderlands, Cider Press Review, Concho River Review, The Lyric, Mankato Poetry Review, Pembroke, Softblow, Sycamore Review, Wisconsin Review, as well as in anthologies and her three books. Her manuscript, I Take This World, won the Main Street Rag Chapbook Contest and her poems took first place at the Austin International Poetry Festival and the Houston Poetry Fest.
