Green Lacewing – a poem by Ruth Holzer

Green Lacewing

He’s floating
in the rain barrel
and though I lift him
out on a leaf to dry,
he doesn’t revive.

Finely made, his
trim pale body,
his sheer veined wings
immune to the breeze,
the long slender feelers,

the legs poised to leap.
He falls and is lost in the grass
for the robin to find.
His meek brown eyes didn’t see me,
but I saw him.

Ruth Holzer’s poems have appeared in Southern Poetry Review, Connecticut River Review, Slant, Blue Unicornand THEMA, and in other journals and anthologies the U.S. and abroad. A multiple Pushcart Prize nominee, sheis the author of five chapbooks, most recently A Face in the Crowd (Kelsay Books, 2019) and Why We’re Here (Presa Press, 2019)