Two Poems

by Laurie Donaldson

Dragonfly

That long day the dragonfly died,
its wings now almost transparent,
but still seeming to change hue.

Gossamer, I thought, not sure
if the hopeful summers to come
would ever be the same.

A thin movement of air lifts
its slender frame, its marking
you can’t define, iridescence lost.

The dreaded call comes faintly,
that it was time to go, to move
on from this favoured spot.

I cup its floating impression,
unsure if it has weight at all,
and try to blow the insect back

to life, into the air,
to snub this terrible interruption,
before I climb into the stuffy car

and fold my newly formed wings
into myself, hoping that drab
will become colour, will be my future.

Scorpion grass

High summer, sun
wheedles, heat pulses,
and forget-me-not tinsel
waves below black-headed gulls
pulling at sky threads.

All feels slackened, motes on
careless random air,
mouse ear foliage on display,
impossible blue with yellow dot target,
inviting me to you.

Such metallic growth with machine
age sheen, self-loving to earth,
buds cloistered
with promise,
grace note brittle.

Don’t forget me, I say
as you turn leaves
towards autumn. And I fold
myself into frayed pages,

to flatten my old spurned love,
so that one day I’ll find you again
a flash of lost colour
unexpectedly slipping from a book
I had meant to read again.

Laurie Donaldson (he/him) is a member of the Greenock Writers’ Club and the Federation of Writers (Scotland). He reads at open mics, and has had poems in Dreich, Cold Moon Journal and the Primo Poetica Collection, and in anthologies, and he reviews new poetry for the Glasgow Review of Books.