✨ Still among the Living

Inhale, exhale, I walk on...

Still among the Living

It’s a north wind’s litter, this tattered
fan, the Monarch I’ve found. In the saving way
a nomad honors a live coal, my hands
enclose it, a folded husk around tomorrow.
Inhale, exhale, I walk on, never
calling, St. Jude, prove you care. And then
ten-fingered envelope, I blow into you,
each breath an island, an iron lung on loan, until
a feeler . . . twitches. Abdomen, thorax,
heart—a mutual flutter. So yes,
maybe this once, it’s right prolonging
longing. I think of my father,
held here by monitored lifelines, gauges
lighting his darkened room. Beyond electronic
susurrus, their steel antennae jitter,
alive to the smallest change. I will not
describe lungs-become-wings. Or what remains
unanswered, between us.
On my desk the Monarch rests,
a palmful of paper and pastel dust, as if
in the eyes of the left-behind living,
a life, lost, could repeat itself. But it lies
still, a silenced hinge: veined fire.

—Laurie Klein

This poem is offered in honor of our June theme: Monarch Butterfly

Used by permission of Laurie Klein, author of Where the Sky Opens: A Partial Cosmography, Cascade Books, © 2016. First appeared in Potomac Review. Featured photo by Aaron Burden, Creative Commons, via Unsplash.