Milkweed And Monarch

As he knelt by the grave of his mother and father the taste of dill, or tarragon- he could barely tell one from the other- filled his mouth. It seemed as if he might smother. Why should he be stricken with grief, not for his mother and father, but a woman slinking from the fur of a sea-otter In Portland, Maine, or, yes, Portland, Oregon- he could barely tell one from the other- and why should he now savour the tang of her, her little pickled gherkin, as he knelt by the grave of his mother and father? * He looked about. He remembered her palaver on how both earth and sky would darken- 'You could barely tell one from the other'- while the Monarch butterflies passed over in their milkweed-hunger: 'A wing-beat, some reckon, may trigger off the mother and father of all storms, striking your Irish Cliffs of Moher with the force of a hurricane.' Then: 'Milkweed and Monarch 'invented' each other.' * He looked about. Cow's-parsley in a samovar. He'd mistaken his mother's name, 'Regan, ' for Anger'; as he knelt by the grave of his mother and father he could barely tell one from the other.