The Monarchs’ Release
by Hope Coulter
People call her the Butterfly Lady
and book her for classes and outings and talks.
She has dimpled cheeks, a long braid,
and a sun porch filled with glass cases
of twigs, minuscule eggs on leaves,
caterpillars, and dry galls of chrysalides
that crack into insects that bloom into flags:
monarchs, splaying new wings in the sun.
I see a fourth-grade class, sprung from school
for a field trip. The children press in to learn
of the glittering scales of the wing, of migration,
of thousand-faceted, spherical eyes. They listen
to the manifold munching of caterpillars,
drop their own jaws in surprise. They jostle and vie
to help the Butterfly Lady by hoisting the cases,
three kids to a corner, trundling them out
the back door, down—a perilous tipping—
and into the sunny yard. The Butterfly Lady wades
through boys and girls like chest-high flowers, kneels
by the cages, and, like a magician removing a scarf,
lifts away the screen covers. “Make a wish!”
she says to the class. “According to legend
they’ll carry it straight to heaven.”
But the monarchs, released,
do not fly skyward. They hover
foreshortened leaves:
flowers like jaunty, delicate cups
fragrant trod plush of the grass.
This world. This world.