Here's a new little poem just out in The Gnarled Oak on-line journal, entitled, On The Nature of Beauty:
On the Nature of Beauty
Linda and I by the woodpile
entranced by a beautiful dragonfly—
green head and speckled body
caught in a spider web,
wings wrapped in sticky silver,
dangling in air from the shed roof.
As we begin to unwrap the dead jewel
it springs suddenly to life,
one wing freed, fluttering madly,
the other still ensnared.
As the dragonfly in a single movement
twists and is free, our cat Sara,
lurking nearby in the purple sage,
leaps an impossible distance
and inches from our startled faces
catches the dragonfly in her teeth,
runs into the yard as though
she were the most beautiful god
in the world.