After the storm, my daughter runs
_ _from deck to wading pool and back, many times,
_ _investigates a dragonfly,
runs an agreement with gravity—
to keep it happy
_ _ that it can have a say—
At what rip in the gravity do we enter?
There are no places yet where her body resists itself
_ _and that is a truth—
and the netted bow of dragonfly wings
and the shaled light on water-surface
and the lilac bush a thousand years from the deck—
Daneen Wardrop is the author of three poetry collections: The Odds of Being, Cyclorama, and Life as It, which received the 2017 Independent Publisher Book Award. A fourth collection, Silk Road, will appear later this year. She has also published three books of literary criticism, including Emily Dickinson and the Labor of Clothing (New Hampshire, 2009). She has received, among other honors, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and the Robert H. Winner Award from the Poetry Society of America. Her poetry has appeared in The Virginia Quarterly Review, AGNI, TriQuarterly, FIELD, The Antioch Review, Crazyhorse, Kenyon Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, North American Review and elsewhere. (updated 4/2018)