Dragonfly Summer
Last summer was the summer of yellowjackets, but this summer their population seems to have crashed and in their place we have dragonflies, zooming like tiny kites through the air. The other day, out in the horse corral, I was surrounded by five of them, hovering around the manure pile. I think they may be eating my fly predators, but there are plenty and very few flies. Normally they eat mosquitoes, but we’ve also been relatively mosquito free this summer.
I’m thinking about climate change quite a bit these days–how it’s impacting regions of the country with sauna-like temperatures. For us, it brings changes in the insect population and just enough heat that we can complain–though we know better than to complain too much about 80 degrees when 40 below is always in our future.
So write about an insect that signifies change or one that signals good things (such as no mosquitoes). Write about the world it inhabits, what it desires, what we are to it.
Post your poem in the comments to this post and I’ll add it here.
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From Karen at KD’s Bookblog:
Belated offering in the insect category:
Inchworm
Mid-day starlings clear the yard of grass seed,
larvae, wild strawberry. One frantic juvenile,
coarse voiced, berates its parents for neglect.
They explain that the gutters are ripe,
and the house gains a pulse from their pecking.
By dusk the birds are gone.
I take the children out of doors,
give them names of plants: marigold,
radish, cornflower. Words hover over us.
Salvia, lemon grass, forget-me-not, chicory,
red clover, star moss, Indian paint brush.
A bright green worm spins down on a thread,
elf from a tree, one worm accounted for.
We go inside. Green jaws chew through
the night, Citizen Worm.
Tags: dragonflies, not complaining, poetry, summer, writing, writing prompt
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