Monarch Roost


There is a feeling of relief when the humid torpor of summer breaks like a large egg being cracked open and the sunny gold yolk of fall weather ripples out like cold, sweet honey. The breeze is delicious, raising the tiny hairs on one's forearms -- causing refreshing, shivery goosebumps, and making one feel alive again. The rocking-chair squeak of cricket song becomes more urgent throughout the course of the day, and the rattling wheeze of cicadas throb in great waves of sound all evening long. The grasshoppers come and spring about on the porch, ricocheting back and forth like super balls, powered by the elastic, rubbery-muscled thighs of their massive, black-ribboned legs. One finally begins to sleep easier at night, freed from the stifling claustrophobia of the heat and the relentless gurgling rumble of the window air conditioners, and it's nice to have the cats wedge themselves into the triangles of one's body -- under armpit, curled between stomach and thigh, behind the back of the knees -- like furry, snoring hot-water bottles. The Monarchs have been surfing the lazy currents of wind like bright orange hang-gliders, and occasionally come to rest in the front-yard tree, where they can sometimes be mistaken, when their wings are folded, for orange-yellow leaves (the first few just now starting to turn). There is supposed to be a tree on Willow Street, and C. says that it might be this very same tree, where the monarchs roost before they migrate, and if they are startled, will rise in an epiphanic and brilliant conflagration of orange fluttering. I have my heart set on its being this tree. I can think of nothing that I'd like better.