“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -
-Emily Dickinson

Colleen Wells writes poetry and creative nonfiction. She’s a recipient of an Indiana Society of Professional Journalists Award and a runner-up for the Robert Frost Poetry Award. Colleen is the author of Dinner with Doppelgangers - A True Story of Madness and Recovery, and the poetry chapbook Animal Magnetism, published by Finishing Line Press in 2022.

Welcome to the Poets Weave. I'm Romayne Rubinas Dorsey. Colleen, what poems have you brought for us today?
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“A Bug’s Life”

On a trip to North Carolina, one of the largest dragonflies I have ever seen smacks our windshield. It is like a tiny helicopter coming in for a crash landing. The impact tears its enormous wings, giving them the jagged crosshatch design of a broken porch screen.

I watch the dragonfly’s legs move slightly and wonder if it was the wind or the last evidence of life. Rick turns on the wipers, but the insect stays wedged between the windshield and the right wiper for the remainder of the trip. Rick keeps saying, “Don’t look at it.” Our sons are oblivious, sitting in the back playing with their Game Boys.

When we get to Wilmington, our destination, I ask Rick to pull into a subdivision, where I slowly pluck the insect from the windshield, half-hoping it is still alive, vainly wishing that it survived not only the crash, but also the two-hour trip at 70 mph.

I lay the dead dragonfly in the yard and examine it. The coloring is a gorgeous dark metallic green— a color I’ve seen before on fancy cars.

His legs curl in finality. My husband interrupts me, calling out the window, “Come on, you’re embarrassing me.”
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“Cut and Carry”

A few tiny ants milling about the circle of trust, a round tapestry on the floor,
set with candles, crystals, sage and yellow daffodils.
It’s a focal point for the writing circle whose facilitators
I overheard plotting the insects’ demise.
The ants are here through no fault of their own,
innocent stowaways who were just
enjoying a taste of spring
in a bunch of plucked daffodils
brought here through no fault of whoever brought in the flowers.
An accident, soon to be a deadly mistake.

How are we different from the tiny ant
when it comes to fate?
How are we different from a speck of pollen
that moves through the wind to parts unknown,
creating flowers for you and I to cut down and carry in?
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“Gardening with the Aunts”

I was picking up sticks,
When I saw a northern map turtle lying near a tree;
I let it be.

Later I told my aunt Sue,
and she said she saw it too,
yesterday, and that she let it be.
I did the math realizing this meant it was very likely dead.

I soon afterward showed aunt Jane
who confirmed it was dead with a tap of her rake.
“That’s the part of nature I hate,” she said.
“I wonder what happened to it,” I mused. “Where did it go?”
“It died,” she said.
“But is the turtle still inside?” I asked.
“No. It’s just a shell,” she said, flipping it over,
exposing the pale-yellow underbelly of the carapace.
It shocked my eyes like neon.

I stood, puzzled,
then realized I’d had this exact conversation
with an older adult as a child.
“We’ll give it a proper burial later,” my aunt promised,
as if that would fix things.

We got busy,
and never did.
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“Once Every Seventeen Years”

A whirring roar signals the onslaught
of their short existence.
I had forgotten this can last for six weeks.
It makes me want to stay indoors.

Husks cover our fence;
our dogs eat them.
Piles of dead cicadas fill
crevices at the bottom of our Oak trees.

One lone soldier with eyes the color
of classic red nail polish
emerges from the pyre
ambling up the bark of the tree trunk.

They are everywhere.
Three cling
to a decorative crystal rock
in the garden as if its healing powers
could give them one more day.

Tiny burrows from where they burst forth
puncture the dirt throughout the flowerbeds.

The noise never stops-
a thousand maracas shaking all around me.
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You've been listening to the poems of Colleen Wells on the Poets Weave. I'm Romayne Rubinas Dorsey.