Earlier this year I watched as one of the first monarch butterflies circled the milkweed/swan plant below our deck. This time I grabbed a pencil and traced her flow on paper, intrigued at her mysterious path of many careful circuits. The drawing ends up a puzzling maze, as if meant to confuse. My notes read she spends minutes circling and making approaches to the plant, swooping past pumpkins, the mustard seed, the raspberries, the snowball tree, diverting attention? Perhaps checking it’s safe, scenting? It’s a dizzying energetic dance, never still. I trace the lines over and over trying to follow the complicated passage.
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Edge of Things 