Behold, Two June Dragonflies

 

Behold, two June dragonflies

make love while in flight—

what a lift and consummate act!

 

Then I remembered—

on our Tiffany dusk-shaded vase,

a dragonfly soaring

is mirrored

 

by a winged calix

a violet iris holds up to the sky

against its setting

glowing in orange,

 

and so disclosing the kinship

between the flower and the amatory fly

as if what the one is

the other would become

 

by trading the calisthenics of caress

for deeper, staying calm

or, contrariwise,

 

enduring stillness,

beholden to the ground,

for such supple motion  

and mutual airborn touch,

 

making me think—

were not irises

once dragonflies

or dragonflies

once submerged flowers

 

and doesn’t descent or rise

follow likewise the soul,

making it shed

its former form,

 

and isn’t there likewise

a love of descent

and a love of rising,

 

with the air-born

learning and knowing

of the lightest

and most fleeting touch

 

with water that holds

in its serene eye

so much of darkness

behind dazzling shine,

 

while crowning the head

with a coronet and beams

out of translucent wings?

 

Thus both irises and dragonflies

live in their own ways

with such a bath and element—

between descent and rise.

 

 

As if each of the two as well

still lived—both here and thereafter—

in a strange reenactment

of Osiris and Isis

 

one of whom tried to spell them—

even now to us—

 

in their own

sagacious name.