Migration – a poem by Cheryl Baldi

Migration

Still, there is joy. Yesterday 
I woke to the monarchs’ 
fall migration, the dune thick 
with goldenrod, and everywhere 
butterflies flitting from one 
yellow plume to the next.

And last night, from the upstairs deck,
we watched Cygnus, 300 miles away, 
launch from Wallops Island, a trail 
of fire lifting in a perfect arc 
through sky so crisp and clear, 
the second stage so bright 
the moon paled in comparison. 

I am sad you weren’t here to see it,
but I want to tell you
this morning gulls work the water
where a school of bluefish heads south, 
and just beyond the breakers
two whales feed.

Even when you and I no longer are here
monarchs will reawaken and 
venture north, laying eggs 
in the milkweed, and a pair of osprey
will return to the buoy
where they have long nested,
where each night in darkness, 
the Northern Cross rises overhead. 

Cheryl Baldi is the author of The Shapelessness of Water and a former Bucks County, Pennsylvania Poet Laureate. A finalist for the Robert Frasier Poetry Competition and the Francis Locke Memorial Award, her work is forthcoming in ONE ART: a journal of poetry and Philadelphia Stories. She lives along the coast in New Jersey and in Bucks County where she volunteers for the Poet Laureate Program and the Arts and Cultural Council.