El Ojo del Lago

As you alight upon my wrist

Looking hale, f

irm and fit

Your Princeton patterned, paper wings

Have brought you here to rest and sit

In these high pines in Mexico

From Canada; you’ve made your flight

Primordial beacon led the way

I, pausing, breathless, drink in the sight,

Scores of thousan

ds dripping here

From branches heavy with the dense

Migratory miracle

Of Monarchs mating, and I sense

As I look out upon the swarm

That I have witnessed here today

An unexplainable event

And now I watch you fly away.

Yet my small life, be as it may

Will never replicate this day.