I knew you would be here. The peonies have opened.
I’ve noticed that you always come at the same time.
Secretly, I think of you as their guardians somehow.
It has something to do with your alertness and the way
you keep watch over them. When I was a child,
the mothers told us that you were called sewing needles
because you would sew up the lips of too-noisy children.
It didn’t work. You only gave us another excuse to squeal our delight
when you and your friends darted by, your iridescent bodies shining.
We shrieked for our gladness for every living thing that flew or floated
or crawled or grew, glad for sunshine and cool water, glad
for our very selves, bobbing on big black inner tubes
on the green sparkling waves of the Saginaw Bay,
damsel flies nearby, poking through the air like needles.