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.
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