I have drawn it ten times in magic
marker, rendered the black
webbing of its wings a thick frenzied

asterisk splattered on a pumpkin canvas
with my kindergartener-clutch, and now
it is here in the schoolyard:

if every cathedral’s stained glass
window was ochre; if every king
and queen were brush-footed,

sipped mead through curled
proboscis, and knew the way, though it be
thousands of miles long,

then I would be their page, following
with fists full of colored pencils, and pockets
bursting with milkweed.