Riches

That afternoon

when I was so mistaken:

Ten thousand monarchs

clung to the naked August boughs

of a buckeye and I thought-

-that they were the dead

orange and black striped leaves

that had yet to fall

onto the dismembered sidewalks

that buttressed the old road

from February floods.

Then they fluttered

and my heart stopped.

so to speak.

I'm saving that for another day,

the final one.

when I hope that I can bring them back

one more time.

And I might not have the touch of your hand

just below my heart like the night we met.

But I still feel it anytime I want to bring it back.

As everlasting as the feathers

of the delicate lithographic wings

of Archaeopteryx. Forever.