The Last Monarch

It was a crisp, windy, lovely morning. We were zipping down the highway in our car with the sun shining down through the open sunroof and the windows cracked. Both boys, asleep in the back seat. We had little company on the road. It was just about as clear and serene a scene as a black-topped surface can offer.

That's when I saw her. A brilliant flash of orange moving against the blurred green of the trees behind. The last monarch butterfly of the year, gracing me with her rare beauty in the near middle of October.

There she was
flying just into my field of vision
fluttering forward
JUST in time
to meet my windshield at 60 mph.

It hurt my heart, but surely not as much as it hurt hers. Ouch.