James Arthur Anderson

Sewing Needle

I’m walking in the garden in the park
when a green darner dragonfly comes near.
Even now I feel a sudden sting of delicious fear,
remembering how I used to think this gentle bug
could sew a child’s lips up tight.

She lands on a white rose right beside me,
all iridescent green with compound yellow eyes atop her
     head.
She poses, statue still, as if inviting me to take a
     photograph,
and looks at me, tilting those telescopic eyes for a better
     view.

I try to control my breathing and my pounding heart
as I admire her, reminding myself that the sewing needle
thing is just a myth to frighten little kids,
and that the needle is just the way she injects her eggs
below the surface tension of the filmy pond.

She looks away, scrubs her face with a hairy arm,
and regards me closely one last time; then with a flurry
of translucent helicopter wings, she’s off again,
flirting with the flowers and making children fly.
_____

James Arthur Anderson has published poems in Muse & Stone, Hidden Oak, Poesia, and elsewhere. His short stories in fantasy and horror have appeared in several anthologies. He lives in North Miami, Florida.