Dragon Fly

Swimming pool, plum tree, agapanthus poke from greenstock

and groundcover,

Buffed winds paddle dust on my mother’s porch

Where the pail Snaketail stream-haunting,

Darts from one resting place

To another, seizing prey along the way.

I say, “I remember you”

On Huntington Library lawn, Lacy park dream, in my young father’s eyes

Fighting lightning bugs across Cleveland river fantasies.

World all over

We’re resting on logs now, stones, and leaves,

We creep and squat

In dark ooze on the bottom of a stagnant pool

Then climb up any convenient support

And transform into adults.

So I say “we must be friends,

I’ve know you long enough”

And you yellowish with reddish veins and clear tips

Fly through summer thoughts landing

Now that I’ve been far away

In warmer springs farther north. Is it true you die so quickly,

No quicker than any last breath

But

You must have seen something I missed

While catching a fly in midair

Before the earth

Stood without you.