#NewThisDay Writing From My Photo Stream
Dragonfly in the meadow
“Dragonflies were as common as sunlight
hovering in their own days
backward forward and sideways
as though they were memory
now there are grown-ups hurrying
who never saw one
and do not know what they
are not seeing. . .”
I saw so many dragonflies in the lacy meadow this morning. I woke deciding to cross the trestle bridge and go into the meadow where I can walk a mowed area all along three edges of a large meadow in sunlight. I wanted to be near the insects. I felt curious and patient. I did this after I worked on my poem for a bit. I opened it first thing to see if I could stand it. Yesterday’s draft held. It drew me back in and I found tweaks worth making. I went back and re-read the poem by Chana Bloch that helped inspire it. And I went back to the pictures that inspired it. And I revised some more. Then I recorded it so I could listen to it on my walk and see if I still liked it at all in my ears and not in my eyes. So we walked towards the river, of course. Still, the poem held. But also, I had another idea. I am still thinking about this idea and whether or not it will work or if it belongs to the poem and if it makes the poem more honest. Tomorrow I will see about that and work some more. In the meadow I chased dragonflies. They landed on wildflowers and grass so quickly. Finally, with the hot sun on my back, I knelt beside this beauty and it stayed long enough for me to get some pictures. There was so much to appreciate in the meadow and along the railroad tracks by the marsh as I headed back. I particularly like the color of the sumac in July. It’s still a pale rosy red, not the deep hot wine red it will soon become. Charlie, in the spilled over Charles, trotted through a sunbeam after chasing a fine happy family of ducks we surprised at the river’s edge. Later in the day I shopped with my youngest who was looking for sales on clothes and then I swam with friends at the pond and we met a lovely cormorant on my friend’s dock who kept swimming and returning to flap its wings to dry them. July. July. July. I love you, July.
