Fritillaries and emperors

Photo by Kevin Faccenda

Where I live, the alder leaves are dropping—
banked sunlight paid up from longer days,
fugitive gold weighting them down until, at
the first north wind, they give up their grip.
But I’ve gone somewhere else, gone to an
open-air memory palace, those mud sloughs
framed with live oak that won’t shed until
spring. Instead of leaves, gulf fritillaries and
hackberry emperors tumble on past, updraft
and down, dusting the same air that’ll carry
me over remembered land—monarch paths
through the chaparral, swallowtails flitting
though mountain passes—until I’m home.