Fluttering around a casa garden
called Romantica on a cliff
overlooking the sea, three of them
helicopter through foliage planted
just for them,

alighting on velvety purple
Mexican bush sage, intricately petaled
zinnias and a rainbow assortment
of lantana.

It’s not that I see every monarch
as the one who flew from us,
she who loved anything adorned
with butterflies but didn’t think
to plant foliage in her yard
to attract them.

My logical self knows that it’s
highly unlikely that, though she
would have loved to, she has
reincarnated as one of these
beauties.

But in a garden only 50 miles
from where she birthed me,
I sit on a bench watching the trio
play tag from blossom to blossom,

flowers that will thrive here
through winter, as I hope
the butterflies will in this
Mediterranean climate.

And I get now, as I always do when
they flit by my field of limited vision,
a big whoosh of her—light and lovely,
warm and wingéd—

what she aspired to in human form,
what she may have cocooned into
and broken out of, emerging from
her chrysalis with soft, crumpled
wings, fluttering into a new life

like that one there, resting on
a floribunda rose before
lifting off again into the light.

•••

(In memory of my mother and all the
companion spirits on this Day of the Dead.)