Welcome and thank you for joining Lorelie and me in savoring and appreciating another poem from Cathy Ross. The NESTER introduced Cathy’s poems five years ago! She contributes regularly and her poetry is a perfect fit for the blog’s mission: “We offer the opportunity to share with each other who we are, the way we live, what we do and what we create.”
Quoting from the back cover of WHAT THE TULIPS SAID: Cathy’s poems are ” . . . playful and poignant, with themes of loss and renewal . . . and reveal the unexpected layers within an ordinary life.”
Author Donald Kemp wrote of Cathy’s poetry. “Cathy Ross’s poems achieve balance between reflections on the natural world, personal loss, love, mortality, and family life, all artfully stitched together and crafted. . . . I sat a long while after finishing her book, reluctant to break its spell.”
Tim
MONARCH
Cathy Ross
Every summer
the monarchs migrate
to forests on the coast
of California, alighting
by the thousands
in the eucalyptus trees,
setting the branches ablaze. .
It takes three life spans
for them to travel full circle
and they must find their way
without ever having
done it before.
If a monarch landed
on my finger, this lost person
would ask her
how she did it,
how she found her way
back to the same tree
as her grandmother,
without ever seeing it,
coming home
for the first time
and the last time.
And perhaps she would tell me
that we all have a sense
of where we’re meant to go,
where home is,
where love waits.
Pay attention, she would say.
Follow your own sun.
CREDITS FOR POSTS:
Writer: CathyRoss
Photographer: Keith Olson, Melizo’s Fragile Butterfly Forest, Justina Smith-Pajeter GraphicDesigner: Tim Olson
Editors: Lorelie & Tim Olson
NESTER url: https://notesfromanester.com
To read Cathy’s previous post “Frog Songs” – click here
Beautiful!