Monarchs and Migration and The Lovely Corpse—September Murfin Verse

Monarchs rest in the doomed National Butterfly Center refuge in Texas.

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.

In better times, Monarch in migration.

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.

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