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, "e;Sonoran Milkweed,"e; "e;Longing In Flight,"e; and "e;Eucalyptus Tree (My Arrival to Rest)."e;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.