Correspondence

 

The morning July sky is gladly clad

in high white clouds—

gently ribbed, suggesting a breast

formed by a passing angel.

 

And I wonder—am I here below

alone in my awe

and my skyward gaze

by which silence grows,

 

stepping into courting eloquence?

Where Did I See or Even Live This Before?

 

In olden times

couples locked in their waltz

under the candles’ amber drip

glided on with outstretched arms

 

as if they too changed into buoyant dragonflies

who, limbs entwined via limbs,

arrayed the air with wheels and hearts,

 

turning in one ceaseless reel

around the glow of ladies’ bared necks:

“Am I a dragon?”—“Just say fly!”

 

though none became a poet

or lyric bard,

still many seemed to hum—

with their enkindled eyes.

People Used to Believe That Dragonflies Weigh Human Souls

 

At this latitude dragonflies abound,

almost all year round,

adding a whirl, a note,

to the air wet and thick

 

where, in flight, their gauzy,

radiant and dashing wings

seem to disappear

and their pin-thin forms

 

flash like striking daggers,

and somehow seeing them

so often and so many

suits a long-ripened taste—

 

as if all these dragonflies

and damselflies as well,

dwelling in this place,

conspired to show me

 

Plato’s double sleight of hand—

that Orithyia, the daughter

of Poseidon’s Ionian mask,

Erechtheus, Athens’ ophidian king,

 

the earth-born “Smasher of the Earth

abducted by Boreas by Ilissus

where, just like her, Socrates

with Phaedrus strayed,

 

must have been at first

an nymph of a dragonfly,

sired by another double,

Hephaestus on Athena’s “thigh,”

 

and that crickets who telltale

on the mortals to each Muse

as well as the Pegasi,

Socratic winged horses,

 

they too stood for dragonflies—

ophidians of the air

who, when coupled

just before they die,

 

draw an image of the heart

between their heads and tails

as they waltz in flight,

shedding their mortal frame

after spending most of life

beneath the water,

hidden among stems

or in some dark aquatic cave,

only to perish—now immortal—

beneath those sheer wings,

veined like the tender lines

of poems that drink of love.