A DEAD DRAGONFLY

A Dead Dragonfly

My heart was moved to see you lying there,

your wings a silken tapestry

spread gracefully

in contrast to the roughness of the concrete path.

At first I thought that you were only resting

from the blissful rigours of a warm late-summer day,

but as I looked, and you remained as still as death,

I saw that, like the first leaf of the autumn fall,

you’d drifted gently down to earth

before the fierce battering of winter

had caught you in its morbid grip.

It seemed as if, perhaps,

you’d chosen your own time and place to die,

not hidden in the gloomy shadows,

but where the sympathetic sun

could still sparkle on your wings

and catch the living fire,

as when your agile body had first danced above the water

or flitted with the joyfulness of life

across the skyscape of a careless summer day.

So, death had not robbed you of your beauty

but just released you early to escape

a harder, crueller end.