The Dragonfly

After the poem "The Man-Moth" by Elizabeth Bishop

Here, below,

the two worlds separate by a veil of fine film wall,

where shadows break, rippling as  shimmering light

swaying like the billowed curtains --an eclipsed view of 

Sprites as young nymphs dancing on this stage of

pale blue shaded pond to the green cold quiet streams.

They inhabit the night moon, the elegant  warm spring,

peering from the womb into the cloudless sky paved with roads

lined with veined marble fossils.

  

            But when the Dragonfly

molts,  he springs from everlasting youth to ascend a final leap,

packing his green, blue, red, and purple suit. Emerging

into the hot humid air with 30,000 suns before his eyes

the viscous aroma draped with fragrant  lotus of summer

along the sidewalks, the meandering stream filled with

swaying blades of grass oiled in morning dew.

He climbs high chasing the breeze-- searching.

 
            Up this revelry

his shadow drips like sand trailing behind the beach before him

rising boldly, thinking as a dragon, breathing fire to shield the

stained glass wings that seem to crumple in the open sky above.

As if forced to discover this new world,  he voraciously gnaws

(Man, enchanted by him, builds a mosaic of illusions)

on green leaves landing at arm's reach captured as a

winged creature, leashed yet eager to fulfill unscathed.

             In every  season,

he returns to the familial oceanic realm he calls home. He writhes,

he flusters, relentless aboard the train bound for unknown
destination almost in a hurried fight, the only enemy Fate follows 

behind.  The Dragonfly hardly misses a spot, peering though this 

veil scaling the heights of eagles, shifting speed and gear
without hestiation before a storm or torrential rain, that--
Thinking of having missed something,  flies backwards.

             Each Autumn night

he sings ancestral night songs reflected on his wings
This dragonfly serenades wind and water with new songs
ridding himself of words heard from voices of every living thing,

seen through on a passing train, each window scene played

on this diaphanous veil floating on the water watching it

again and again, hovering above the children

speaking as their prophet out from a cave!

            If he lets you

catch him, gently take the offering tail as it points to the sky,

the entire cycle itself, the grasp six times tighter, focuses all eyes

on you.  Here, this Jurassic marble whose strands sewn into mine,

opens with wide wings,  unfettered by the thread now wrapped
around the tail,  gifts the last cordial possession,

parting with him in flight flies like an origami kite--

unstrung, linked only by a strands of dreams that ripple
from the deep blue pond to the breaking night sky.