I’m writing this column on a summer day when a hungry crowd of Monarch butterfly caterpillars are eating the upper leaves of the milkweed just outside my door in Nebraska, and my wife and I are joyful that they’re getting a good start at life. The following poem is from Stuart Kestenbaum’s new book, How to Start Over, from Deerbrook Editions. He lives in Maine and is the state’s Poet Laureate.

Joy

The asters shake from stem to flower

waiting for the monarchs to alight.

Every butterfly knows that the end

is different from the beginning

and that it is always a part

of a longer story, in which we are always

transformed. When it’s time to fly,

you know how, just the way you knew

how to breathe, just the way the air

knew to find its way into your lungs,

the way the geese know when to depart,

the way their wings know how to

speak to the wind, a partnership of feather

and glide, lifting into the blue dream.

We do not accept unsolicited submissions. American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2019 by Scott Wiggerman, “Johnsburg,” from Local News: Poetry About Small Towns, (MWPH Books, 2019). Poem reprinted by permission of Scott Wiggerman and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2020 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction’s author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006.