The speaker is pointing at a monarch butterfly, perhaps one that grew up on a milkweed plant stubbornly surviving at the edge of the driveway, or one saved from a predator in a friend's garden (the poem names "Polly's patch"). From there the poem turns to the familiar idea that a butterfly's wings could change the weather on the other side of the world. The speaker gently corrects it: maybe the real change isn't in the air at all, but in the viewer. What matters is the sight of that "brave orange and black animal," so fragile on a leaf and then carried across the sky.
The mood is quiet, tender, and a little hopeful. The speaker sounds amazed by small things, and the repeated word "change" ends the poem on a question rather than a claim. Anyone who sees the butterfly might be changed by it, and no one can say who. The poem suggests that small moments of beauty and care spread outward in ways we can't track.