J U L Y 1 9 9 7 ![]() DRAGONFLYby Andrew Hudgins | |||||||||||||
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Book says "most predacious." Book says "fastest flying insect," says it eats its body weight in half an hour. Mother called it the devil's darning needle. Book adds "darner" and "devil's arrow." Mother said it would stitch shut the eyes, ears, lips, of sleeping children, and Book confirms that mothers would say that. Book says dragonflies can snap a gnat in mid- air, eat it on the wing, and Book says that what I've always called a dragonfly is really, with its long, slender body, a damselfly which strafes the pond clot, soars, swoops, hovers, sideslips, loops, and twists, sunlight revealing a new glint of iridescent shimmer -- purple, red, green, turquoise, gold, gunmetal blue -- with every pass. It's hunting: a whip tip cracking gnats out of the air so quick I can't see it happen and wouldn't know except I trust Book, Book, the goddamn book, because I cannot see the hunting. See what looks like pleasure (loop and soar), but isn't. Book insists on purpose. Not even blood sport. Work. But its purpose is not my purpose: pleasure (dive, jink, roll, then stillness at great speed) beside black water. Andrew Hudgins is a professor of English at the University of Cincinatti. His most recent collection of poems is The Glass Hammer (1994). Copyright © 1997 by The Atlantic Monthly Company. All rights reserved. The Atlantic Monthly; July 1997; Dragonfly; Volume 280, No. 1; page 82. |
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