Dragonfly Light

In dragonfly fields the sun hovers
over three boys running,
lifting their voices with their feet

to catch the winged light
far from the media’s
meretricious images of right,

which fade in grains of sky
billowing from waist-high grass
full of goldenrod splashing air

along the dirt and gravel way.
In dragonfly fields you can see
their constant wings

musing on truth and mirthful,
while in the sprawling marsh egrets
are poised to rise above the reeds:

the look is the look of song --
not sorrow from too skinny or fat
or the spent purse and spending --

major silent chops on pianos of air,
like the sharp-eyed patient look of heron
perched on a dead branch,

perched by low marsh pools,
more focused than any camera’s eye
on the flesh of life in the mucky ooze

as ripe and rife as dragonflies
wheeling as one on this August evening.
Can you see them? can you watch

and watch, not glance the glance of fitful
frenzied fads fueled by spurious stars
or Klein or newest flakes of the untrue?

Can you see us, their wings insist,
(no solipsistic me, no mirror for
the media’s maculate faces)

seemingly soundless wing
and lift the air
as from our wings

we drop on top of grass-ear tops
and jolt sight to borders of paintbrush
red, whose scarlet jewels glitter not

in the balanced heedful green of pines
and hearted poplar leaves that hold fields up
as our wings hold our useful bodies

fed by natural food of fearlessness
open to three boys running
and lifting their voices with

the towering sycamore’s hands
applauding in dragonfly fields
all deathless sunful hovering.


John Kryder



Poems