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and the ripped mummies of last year’s cattails,

and waiting with nervous patience, the Least Flycatcher

casually held a dragonfly lightly—like a cigarette
suddenly adding color
in an old black and white French film
with subtitles adrift on the screen—a dragonfly
with all four wings shimmering into the perfect bright coals
magically dispersed
into the the hero’s exhausted imagination.

Then suddenly, the flycatcher flew from the snag near us

to the tamaracks at the marsh’s edge,

and back again, over and over,
oddly repetitious.
In its beak, the dragonfly was glowing in the setting sun
as we sat quietly in the growing shadows.