Kingdom Come

What I learned in the springtime was that monarchs are the only butterfly species that, like the birds, make the full migration from north to south, and back again. They fly south in August, great papery hoards of them flittering across a hot summer sky on a path to Mexico; a bold and patterned mass bending and diving and floating together as one. It is not for themselves, but for their children, for the progeny that will burst forth from soft-clinging eggs laid along the way. For such a voyage requires the fortitude of generations to succeed, each leg fought by the next round of freshly emerged paper-winged kings. Again and again they are born to fly ever-closer to a space (a hot and mystical grove) where offspring generations down the line will alight on the bark of giants and huddle close, safe from the bitter cold of northern winters. This great pattern of flight, I was told, is woven between the fibers of their flesh, into the very core (whatever that may be) of their being and as that third or fourth generation of wanderers lands, they rest for months as though the entirety of their ancestral struggle lies heavy upon the ringed and bonded compounds of their crushable casements. It was then that I learned, also, that up above in the leafy treetops, birds sometimes look down with small, dark eyes, hungry beaks slightly agape in the forest heat.