Poems by Daniel Brennan

Trail of the Monarchs

by Daniel Brennan

From Canary Summer 2023

Daniel lives on the west side of Manhattan, his apartment on a tucked-away side street pummeled by winds coming off the Hudson River. In the turn of spring, the scent of brine and algae becomes a perfume along the highway where he spends his mornings biking downtown.

You’ll never see them, so let me tell you:

Flickering mottled orange and black
springing forth from beneath milkweed leaves,

dreamcatcher wings.

I wish you could stand in awe as their tongues plead
for nectar, gathered around

unfurled blooms like children around a sprinkler in the dead of July.
I wish
you could understand
the peril of their journey, spanning continents;

filigree limbs carrying them from one half-haven to the next

over the choke of building gray in the air.
They will be long gone, we know this now.

By the time you can speak their name, the Monarchs

will have lost their way. No passage to speak of, the winds
will be thick with perfume that sends them to their graves.

They don’t have long to tell their story, so neither, then, do I.

I wish you could know that wonder
when a rogue butterfly finds bare skin, finds an oasis in you,

child of my child, decades from now.

I need you to know that even in this sinking heat we leave behind,
it was only ever about pushing on; forgive me for following this road

we’ve built until I could not follow it any longer, a final migration.

You’ll never see them, so let me tell you. They’re dancing on
the stretch of lawn my parents discovered decades ago that, in decades to
come, will be a palimpsest, a memory. Let me tell you:

I wish you could know the peace I knew: Summer,
that flicker, light cast gently on the milkweed leaves.