Liberation
by Danae Wilkin

The wind is breathing,
skimming atop mini-peaks
a swimmer’s wake

Pool prisms wave west to east,
shimmering and shade
like a braided river
announcing glaciers lost
with suspended sediment
making teal the water holding
rock, dust, and ancient air,
aqua as the chlorine pond
where she walks
up to her neck.

Within her eyeline,
little guys and gals float about.
Some gave up thrashing,
succumbed.
New arrivals
still in shock,
fighting the liquid death
that they once thought friend,
getting a cool taste,
suddenly ensnared.

She judges not.

Moth pumice gray,
the hardest to rescue,
for the residue on wings
once removed dooms the silvery ones
even as they dry on the concrete and brick lip.

Mud bees striped like hornets,
crawl up her delicate hands,
as do frightened honeybees.
She holds a flying ant;
it stings her for her efforts.

She cradles the bees, the moth,
or else leaf-scoops them like the wasp.
None complain,
their sticky six grabbing her
like a life saver,
setting them down beyond the bricks
as they clean and flap and dry,
then take off to other skies
under the beating sun:
its heart knowing none and all,
an existence impartial to such things.

She only finds drowned dragonflies
and many cement-colored arachnids.
Sadness ensues.

In home,
the flies she springs with mere cleverness:
closing the blinds,
turning off lights,
opening a door into the daylight.

They go toward the brightness
as we may one day,
our deliverance
from solipsistic-prison.

The buzzing ones in the yard
avoid summer flecks
of the hose shower she gives
to swords of grass.
To them, summer green and wheat yellow
are launching pads,
to release the spirit,
once again.

And many of us are blind.