Raymond Byrnes lives in Virginia. His recent poems have appeared in Shot Glass Journal, All Roads Will Lead You Home, Panoply, Typishly, Better Than Starbucks, Eclectica, Sky Island Journal, and Split Rock Review.
Asters
Out front, soaking rains that fell last month
push out, through sun-scorched clumps,
scattered clouds of waving white anemones.
Out back, as red and yellow zinnias subside,
plain green aster shrubs, dressing for the last
dance, unbutton a thousand purple blossoms.
Vagrant monarchs, probing worker bees,
swallowtails, fritillaries, moths in moonlight
mine densely flowered mounds, mottled gold.
A week of rain leaves blue-chalk skies, starry
nights trailing frost at dawn, and abandoned
aster plants, heavily arrayed in soft brown buds.
Airborne
They say, for all the millions spent on micro-drone
development, plus testing them aloft in swarms,
nothing yet can match the aerobatics of a dragonfly.
Children know. They scream and run with covered
heads from the bug that comes to stitch their scalps.
Doesn’t matter if it never happens, because it might.
From perched to full speed in a blink; forward, back,
up, down; catching, eating flies on the wing; it flits
about, propelled on four thin strips like latticed glass.
Dragons fly in many forms: Darners, Skimmers,
Meadowhawks, Dashers, Snaketails, Boghaunters,
Spineylegs, Clubtails, Shadowdragons, Emeralds.
Engineered assemblies fly, but fuel cells get depleted.
Dark water nymphs climb stems to wait in sunlight for
humped-up creatures to burst their skin and open wings.