"Last Week in July"

                                        Last Week in July



We are outside in evening,
The last week of July;
The sun is low. Light gleams on leaves
And on the water of the pool,
Though most of it by this time
Is deep in shadows of the darkest blue.

A dragonfly, so huge, so red,
So jubilant, perches ahead of us
Upon a garden stake there
In full sunlight. He is so happy,
So glad to be alive. He jumps up
And flits around and then comes back
To the stake.  Three times,
Then two small birds dart in,
Darting aslant of stake and pool 
And line of sight.  The dragonfly is gone!

"Could they have taken him?
It was so fast, it scarcely seemed to be."
But in the quickly fading sunlight he returns
No more to garden stake beneath the tree.
Darkness is about to fall, so gently and so sweet.
There's still the feeling of the garden's calm
Without its peace.

That is the end of that poem. I wrote it about ten years ago when we lived next door in the big house with the huge pool.  I loved swimming when it was warm enough.  If we were there this summer, we'd never get to swim, because the pool was too big to afford heating and this is a cool cool August. YAZZYBEL