Ode to a Dragonfly
High in the torrid, torpid dog-day air
A shape, elusive, skeletal, darts by—
Yet elongated, elegant, sleek, fair—
A rarity that grabs the languid eye:
Delicate, opalescent, like etched glass,
Borne on four gossamer wings spanning wide,
Delicate lacework intricately spun.
Of all the swift-winged, airborne forms that pass
Through these bright skies—that flutter, flit, or glide—
Your beauty stands apart, alike to none.
So small, so fast, you lead the eye amiss,
Chasing your errant, flitting, aerial dance,
Stealing only the shortest awe-struck glimpse
As granted by the random wiles of chance.
Fragile, elaborate, ephemeral;
So easy to snuff out with fingertips,
So quickly fading, yielding to decay:
Intricate artwork, preternatural,
Flashing ghostlike before the shades eclipse
Eternally to whisk your grace away.
Yet though your fragile beauty evanesce
Inside the temporal and physical,
Neither its transience nor its tininess
Confine you: you are not material.
Your maze of intricate complexity
Shows craftsmanship of a divine command,
Art fashioned not in vain from carbon-chains;
It flashes in the eye and memory,
The prototype that guides the artist’s hand
And out of him eternally remains.
Rapture
On the Final Movement of Beethoven’s
Eighth Symphony
.
Quavering strains of purest joy,
First sparkling then exploding forth
As cosmic energies deploy,
Enlivening with light and warmth—
Ecstatic, dancing, loving life,
Yet straying, too, to reminisce
Or daydream, surge with inner strife,
And even face the dark abyss
Only to reel back with a laugh.
Bright, dark the driving rhythms course,
Give drunken ears sweet draughts to quaff,
Refreshed in floods of sonic force.
Joy! Boundless joy, forever captured
In form that holds me now enraptured.
Adam Sedia (b. 1984) lives in his native Northwest Indiana and practices law as a civil and appellate litigator. He has published four books of poetry and his poems, essays, and fiction have appeared in various literary journals. He is also a composer, and his musical works may be heard on his YouTube channel.
