Poet Danielle Alexich is ChicoSol’s resident poet, who reminds us of the power of art to inform.
After four days of century-mark heat,
I open the door at dawn
to a blue dragonfly
guarding the screen.
He shimmers in the breeze.
I gaze at his compound eye
and delicate wings.
Later in a strip mall parking lot,
a blue heron poses next to my car.
Mohawk-feathered rockstar
glares at me, his eye
a suspicious bead,
then sidesteps into the bushes.
I drive home past two dried up creeks
and listen to the radio news.
So much is tender—
the throat of our homeland,
my private chamber of aloneness
even in the presence of others,
the wary creatures unconcerned
with my confessions.
I roll down the window.
A cloudless sky before sunset.
If only we agreed on the color blue
and how our world would feel
if it vanished.