by Dan Veach

Millers

Small, unassuming, dusty gold,

their wings swept back like jets,

we called them “millers”

years before I heard 

of human mills and millers.

Little skippers built for speed,

you had to be lucky and lightening quick

to catch one. When released,

they left a fairy powder

on our fingers, flecks of gold

more finely divided than dust.

I knew what it meant to catch a fleeting thing

before they ever taught me how to grind 

the flour of the word. Before I ever heard

of Chaucer’s miller, windmills,

Don Quixote’s reckless charge—

before I ever threw myself, headlong

against the whirling beauty of the world.  

-from Cortland Review, August 2009