Monarch
These lift me through the airy height
(These wings acquired through a night),
Into a foreign world above
Of light and warmth and truth and love.
What seems a dream are days gone by
When I knew nothing of the sky—
Just toil on an earthly bed
And thoughts of milkweed in my head.
But then I there within a husk
That dangled from an aspen tusk
Began to form a different bent
That I knew not was heaven meant.
And now I'm lifted through this air,
And though attaining beauty fair,
The only thing that moves me now
Is that I share this flight somehow.
About this poem
It was sometime in spring of 2008 when I was asleep one afternoon and, in my dream, in both rhyme and meter, these words appeared there: "But then I there within a husk / That dangled from an aspen tusk". I woke up, I wrote the lines down, and for the next several weeks tried to give context to them in this poem. I chose the simple rhyme scheme of 'aabb' based on the scheme 'given' me in the dream and adhered to tetrameter as the guiding meter for the same reason. Redemption is the poem's working theme. more »
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"Monarch" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 30 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/138856/monarch>.
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