Old Monarch

This poetry collection reads like a transformation, with me, the narrator, being the figurative Old Monarch. Documenting this journey, the book is separated into three sections, "Sonoran Milkweed," "Longing In Flight," and "Eucalyptus Tree (My Arrival to Rest)."

In the first stage of my journey, I explore my childhood in Arizona and the naive assumptions of youth. At this stage in my journey, I am impressionable, seeing the world with all its nuances for the first time. Through the landscape of the Sonoran Desert, I explore some dark family dynamics and what a child sees. Several characters turn up in the early poems, including my cowboy grandpa and the single mother who raised me. The early poems also explore my desire to see a brighter world of possibility beyond the dusty desert island and see humans more clearly within the confounds of discovery.

In the second stage, I have left home. I am falling in love for the first time as I become a young woman.

Finally, the last stage is the old monarch's arrival to the garden. This section contains many metaphysical and philosophical poems. I arrive at the figurative garden, and I finally understand the journey at the edge of my life. There are many poems in the context of a garden here, accepting mortality and the ever-changing world. They can be read as wise old woman poems.