Visions

It begins with one tau emerald, dead
    on the screen door. Nose-diver, weighted

dart. Then another—alive, hovering over
    my daughter’s head like an emergency.

For a moment it appears to land on her hair
    cross-hatched like a river’s tan bank

until a shift of her body, of light, is seized
    in a pair of compound eyes. Resolution

exchanged for relational, wide-angle vision—
    a message to move on. In a week made strange

by weather, we see the garden become air-
    space. Sunlight vents serrated mandibles,

crowns lawns in chiton. Decline so common-
    place we doubt at first our eyes, deny

this iridescence of wings, abundant swarm.
    How did we overlook nymphs stirring

for months in aquatic cellars, busting out
    of temporary suits every other night?

And where is our nearest body of water?
    We walk the block seeking the source before

heat returns us—fractious, empty-handed—
    to the question, what else did we miss?

Urgent as a dragonfly’s predacious flight.