monarchs
Posted inTricks

monarchs

We lost the monarchs
the way we lose our elders,
slowly,
while pretending we still have time.

Once, they filled the sky like prayers,
orange veils of migration,
whole bloodlines flying home to die
on sacred trees.

Now, they flicker like rumors,
like faith we forgot to feed.
Milkweed turned to concrete.
The fields went silent.

And the bugs,
the whole small nation of wings and hums,
gone too.
Forty, fifty, maybe seventy percent vanished
and the air forgot its own heartbeat.

We built glass kingdoms
and wondered why nothing sings anymore.