On the Fragility And Glory of Autumn: “Royal Wind Riders”

A biology teacher dispatched me to collect

insect quarry in September’s fading days,

and I waited out a chrysalis until it cracked,

a wet crumple clinging to the shell

as I hovered with a quick lid and a Mason jar

fuming with a splash of rubbing alcohol.

The monarch’s wings dried, spreading until I scooped

it to murder within three desperate flaps,

denying the rule driven by one design—

a never-ceasing line of four generations,

like solar flares, spent spring into summer,

fluttering one month toward inglorious death

except for the season’s final heirs—migrants

beating to coastal California and Mexico

at the whim of high winds until dropping

to roost on trees, hanging like tiger-stripe curtains,

warming until their rides on upward air

to bask in the sun beyond binocular view.

I, the prisoner of a GPS, wonder

at their return, thousands of miles, to pair off

in early spring; their eggs, like periods,

punctuate the underside of milkweed leaves.

The caterpillars hatch and gnaw, shedding

five times over, until crawling off to digest

their rippled bodies, dissolving in soup

cocooned in cases like gold-speckled jade—

awakening, fewer each year, outnumbered

by Starbucks in Golden State winters,

their day of the dead repeating, season-long,

with Midwest milkweed succumbing to herbicide

and nectar flowers wasted by insecticides

intended for moths, mosquitos, grasshoppers.

The legend—the flight of souls, each less

than a gram—fades the way of passenger pigeons

that smothered skies but disappeared in fifty years.

Freeing a butterfly releases a divine wish—

but that old tale escaped me a half-century ago

when I lost my way, snuffing out a jewel.

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“Royal Wind Riders” appears on page 48 of The Tears of Things: Poems.

A 2022 article in Smithsonian Magazine said, “According to pre-Hispanic folklore, the migrating butterflies carried the souls of ancestors visiting from the afterlife. For centuries, Mexico’s monarchs have served as a powerful cultural symbol of connecting the living to the dead.”

The World Wildlife Fund issued this statement on monarch butterflies in December 2024:

“For years, WWF and partners’ research in the monarch’s wintering habitat in Mexico has documented a long-term decline in their numbers. Increased threats from habitat loss, pesticides and climate change have reduced populations to the point where migratory monarchs need additional protections to help ensure their survival.

“Stabilizing and reversing population trends requires an all-hands approach that not only relies on government protections, but also collaboration among landowners, farmers, conservationists, and everyday citizens who can help safeguard critical habitats along their 3,000-mile migratory route across Canada, the U.S., and Mexico. Accelerating efforts to restore milkweed populations, reduce the use of harmful pesticides and herbicides in the U.S., and enhance forest restoration in critical wintering habitat in Mexico can help return this iconic species to its historical abundance.”

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A veteran of Time Inc. and Dotdash Meredith (People Inc.), Catherine Hamrick is the author of The Tears of Things: Poems (Madville Publishing). Her poetry has appeared in Appalachian Places, Appalachian Review, The Blue Mountain Review, The Citron Review, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, storySouth, and elsewhere.

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