MIGRATORY

butterflies, moving, turmoil in the tenderness

Of the world’s 1.75 million or more animal species, 8,000 to 10,000 migrate. Humans, for many, many years, were some of these creatures.

I am a migratory thing.

every reckoning is a promise 

do you want to know how I think it happens


the trees whisper the way 

to their mother

and their mother’s mother. 


I have walked enough to learn 

that I have been 

so very wrong 


to dream I was going 

anywhere but here, 

home. 


In the process of unfolding, 

a caterpillar turned to mush, 

a goo inside of its cocoon. 


Can I propose to you 

that your world is not ending, 

but that you are building wings? 


In the walls of my home, 

curled into the carpet, 

I have wept and torn something. 


Do not tell me this is anything but emergence.  

Turmoil is a promise, 

Nature says: there is not one way to thrive.



I was so very wrong, 

there was never such a thing as stagnation, 

just a period where I would be given a chance 



to hear my heart beat 

a thousand songs of what could be — 

a chance to say thank you. 

---

As I was sifting through my drafts, I found this poem I wrote last summer in Montana. I recall the daylight had closed itself back around my shoulders, telling me sweetly to go on. A yellow flash of swallowtail butterfly crossed my path. I was talking to God in the heat. The creek knew my name, my footprints. J and I had just moved.