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Monarchs rest in the doomed National Butterfly Center refuge in Texas.
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They
say that this September Monarch
butterflies are making a comeback
of sorts. My nature loving Facebook friends, who notice such
things, commented from several locations and posted photos. But before the
celebration for the gets out of hand, ecologists,
who should know, express concerns about long-range climate change and habitat
destruction and the particularly egregious bulldozing of the National
Butterfly Center in Mission, Texas, a critical preserve, to make way for Donald
Trump’s beloved border wall.
A poem from my 2004 collection We Build Temples in
the Heart took note of the epic fall migration when it was still
routine.
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In better times, Monarch in migration.
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Migrations
Later they will
come,
the legions of Canada
on the edge of cutting cold,
backs scraping stratus slate,
arrayed in military majesty,
dressed in ranks and counting
cadence,
squadron after squadron, an air
armada,
single minded in their migratory
mission.
But now,
when September sun lingers and
lengthened shadows hint ferocity to
come,
the first glints of gold and black
flit
with seaming aimlessness,
pushed here and there by the
faintest zephyr,
the pioneers of a nation,
descended from Alberta prairies
and Minnesota Lakes.
One will linger
briefly on my shoulder
if I am blessed, then be off again.
Then, if she is
lucky
she will pause to rest with
the millions along the bend of the
Rio Grande
before finding a winter’s respite of
death
amid deep Mexican forests.
And it will turn
again next spring—
egg to larva,
larva to silken slumber
pupa to Monarch
Monarch to
migration.
Oh ye proud Canada,
mute your boastful
blare—
the mighty bow
before true courage.
—Patrick Murfin
The
approach of the International Climate
Strike this Friday, September 20 reminded me of this other
fragile canary-in-the-coal-mine.
In 2015 Lisa Haderlein, a McHenry County maven of the environment and preserver and restorer of the wild places posted a photo on Facebook. It was taken outside the Starline Gallery in Harvard. It got me to thinking….
Lisa Haderlein's telling photo.
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The Lovely
Corpse
Monarchs, they
say, are a dying breed.
Not the
superfluous Royals of Windsor
or oil rich Arabs.
They will
disappear, too,
in their own
good time
but are not our
business here today.
I am talking
about those golden orange and black
zephyr riding marvels that by the
millions
used brighten Septembers
with hints golden autumn yet to come
on their epic migrations
from Canadian prairies
to Mexican piney woods.
They are scarcer
with every passing year.
Now each
sighting is an adventure
like spotting some rare songbird
flitting unexpectedly from bough to
bough.
They say the
warming world is to blame
which is tough on common milkweed,
the migrant’s only diet.
Perhaps.
But if I say it
out loud,
some Fox News
talking head
will scream that
I’m a liar and a fraud
and someone will
decide that after all
they are illegal
immigrants
and likely
terrorists to boot
and propose to
build a wall net
to ensnare them
lest they
infect our
purity.
A friend of mine
espied one the other day
and thought to snap a photo,
but the monarch was not on wing
or resting on some rare milkweed
pod,
but splatted against the gleaming
grill
of a Jaguar.
Think of all
that horse power
from the carbon spewing engine
that cooks the atmosphere
that kills the milkweed
yet made this assassination
personal.
—Patrick
Murfin
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