Elemental (Poetry)

Pondside, languid, in a lukewarm pocket
of a casual sun’s designing
the grass a lumpish damp-patch couch
on which to lie so idle and half-dreaming
no surprise I’m startled by a dragonfly

as it climbs grumbling up a reed’s long stalk
still wet from birth — its nymph-skin left to dry somewhere
waterlife abandoned for a change of air
it turned its compound eyes on me and spoke

a clear voice cool and lilting, curious
to what I felt for Nature and her kind
she let me think awhile and flexed her light-glazed wings
absorbed in this so delicate, essential operation
checking her machinery of flight

I watched in awe and answered how I never failed to be
enchanted and she laughed at this
I imagined wistfully
then she suddenly took off and soared
circled high above my head
as fierce a hunter as before her transformation
‘farewell’ the last thing that she said

I woke to evening breeze stirring, a wood ant crawling
on my arm like I was simply part of everything
I spoke to him, felt foolish, eased the creature off
onto a leaf, then looking down to where thin stems
sank deep into another world, I saw her skin —
the dragonfly’s old shaggy dress discarded there

It seemed a magick thing, and so I took the wrapping home
to remind me some part of every life, however small
is always left behind when we move on