Dragonfly

I wasn’t expecting company,
When a dragonfly stopped upon my foot.
I did not dare move my new friend,
For in a second we had become inseparable.

Its wings were beaten and battered,
I sympathized, for so have mine been.
I put down the letter I had been reading,
Corporate America loves me more than my extended family.

I leaned over to speak with it,
It’s been so long since I last spoke to a dragonfly.
They would whisper to me during my youth,
In the various yards I grew up in.

The dragonfly didn’t have much to say,
It seemed to suffer from a learned helplessness.
For, with each breath of the wind,
It simply shuddered.

I reached down and extended a finger.
Ever so lightly it grasped on.
I lifted my hand to the sky,
The little creature spread his wings.

Though he had been aggrieved,
His wings still remembered flight.
If woodwinds could become voices,
So would the dragonfly speak thanks.

That day the clouds were miles of smiles,
I watched my little friend disappear into the white.
It seemed as though I had lost a dear friend.
How funny a simple encounter can be.

I sometimes think maybe it tricked me.
Perhaps I held not a dragonfly at all.
Perhaps it was a little angel,
And with nothing more than a finger,
I helped it rise back to heaven.
A finger can be the mast on the strongest ship.