The winning entry in our 6th annual Poetry contest is Mary Barnard.
ORANGE
Morning
sun still in the east,
her
wings a dedicated orange
within
black solder,
their
hinges warming up
for
the flight south.
This
year every girl,
arms
outstretched,
wears
a Monarch costume.
City
streets their flyway,
plastic
pumpkins bulging.
The
real Monarchs bulge
with
eggs, future King Willies
named
by homesick Dutch
colonists
for their monarch,
Prince
William of Orange.
Single
females converge
in
central Texas by magic,
nymphalidae
magic,
cohorts
cavorting map-less
toward
oyamel trees.
A
color: best on redheads,
the
dusk of a green leaf,
plump
glow of some squash,
and
as long as sanctuaries intact,
the
velvet of a butterfly wing.
