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—the dragonfly knows his name
refuses to meditate
understands moments as hours
as days as years, seconds. Short.
Eternal. Dragonflies frenzy in august.
Why august no one knows
but them.
A squadron without form or
structure of any kind, a swarm
oddly fractal, portions of many more
make doppelgängers variously placed
in maniacal flightpaths and still avoiding
any possible collisions.
O, the length of the suns that groan
above entire lives, repelling all shadows
adrift left to right across lawns. Like
Macedonians now too far from home
to ever return, dragonflies have reached
their glorious, brief Indus.
L. Ward Abel
L. Ward Abel’s work has appeared in hundreds of journals (Rattle, Versal, The Reader, Worcester Review, Main Street Rag, others), and he is the author of four full collections and ten chapbooks of poetry, including his latest collection, Green Shoulders: New and Selected Poems 2003–2023 (Silver Bow, 2023). Abel resides in rural Georgia.