Sometime after the last snows of winter,
among the cattails,
it’s all dragonfly monkey business,
buzzing in and out of spines,
cruising inches above the fresh thaw,
flesh, metallic colors.
more alert than old biddy neighbors
for midges and mosquitoes.
Anna leans into the insect fray,
reaches beyond the skunk cabbage,
ignores its rotting meat.
to get at the coltsfoot, its heart-shaped leaves,
yellow blossom.
In the trunk of newly budded elm,
a heart is carved,
a deep channel of construction,
part horizon, part history.
The tree reminds her of a man
holding up a sign,
one side says go, the other stop,
and the wind can’t stop itself from spinning it.
so neither joy or sorrow
is ever quite uppermost enough.
Inside the house, Anna still can’t
come to terms with darkness,
every bulb as bright as life used to be,
attracting moths of course,
small and white who gather at the glass
to worship the blinding filament within.
As her memory cobbles together
an orgy of name-giving,
a ranting of bitter certitudes,
they pulse their wings,
touch briefly down on heat,
before fluttering away in a tribal dance.
Days after her husband hung himself,
Anna ruptured her own guts with his pain,
consumed with a fire that crackled, louder, fiercer,
than the wretched homilies of others.
Now she sits by the pond,
adores the humming of those darting, dipping,
relentless, dragonflies.
She understands they only have a short life.
Like the coltsfoot that soon enough
will shrivel in the vase.
Like everything that beats its wings.
Like anything that shapes her.
