the dragonfly

Today I saw the dragon-fly
Come from the wells where he did lie.

An inner impulse rent the veil
Of his old husk: from head to tail
Came out clear plates of sapphire mail.

He dried his wings: like gauze they grew;
Thro' crofts and pastures wet with dew
A living flash of light he flew.

Alfred Lord Tennyson

You are made of almost nothing
but of enough to be great eyes
and diaphanous double vans;

To be ceaseless movement,
unending hunger, grappling love.

Link between water and air, earth repels you.
Light touches you only to shift into iridescence
upon your body and wings.

Twice-born, predator, you split into the heat.
Swift beyond calculation or capture,
you dart into the shadow which consumes you.

You rocket into the day.
But at last, when the wind flattens the grasses,
for you, the design and purpose stop.

And you fall with the other husks of summer.

Louise Bogan