Green breast, yellow crest,
blue wing, black beak,
morning light, morning colors,
shimmer bright, zipline drive,
bird dives, 900 tries,
in twelve hours,
summer hours,
tendrilled sweat of days.
Jellybean orbed water drops
catch in spider nets in gamma grass.
Independence Day observed rises as
a day like any other,
a morning burdened with dew.
A dying sun burns off.
Blind sun, with fiery fingers,
touches every blade of grass,
every antler of a cricket
whispers, what is this?
It’s the same blue sky,
same bird flying high
whether we’re in jail
in a house, in a school
on the ripples of a pond.
Dragonflies insist
I am no slave, there is no master
(but the ones we make of mud and disaster).
It’s Independence Day today.
Sunflower stalks host orgies of ladybugs
who tear apart aphids
suckling at a watery leaf
that stretches out its palm to fingers of sun above
generates chlorophyll of our veins
the waterfall that runs from crown
out the very soles of feet
that crush the grass
press in the soil a mark
a sign of what was there and what will come.
Lurch the engine in reverse, give it gas,
slide to drive, inch forward among the rippled ponds of
circling swallows in air above.
Another hot morning.
They’ve been diving for hours.
They will dive for hours.
We drive for an hour.
We snatch a strong second,
centuried moments of watching.
Swallows encircle
each neighborhood soul.
This is no Independence Day, like any other.
We’ve found our masters:
elliptic miracle of swallows
a staggered stupor of a sun
the fainted grasses that lay drying
in bitter heat that grows.
—Emily Romano
