Edited and introduced by Wesley McNair, Maine poet laureate.

Louise Bogan, one of America’s finest lyric poets, was born in Livermore Falls. A resident of Manhattan, she often returned to Maine, which is perhaps the source of today’s poem.

The Dragonfly

By Louise Bogan

You are made of almost nothing

But of enough

To be great eyes

And diaphanous double vans;

To be ceaseless movement,

Unending hunger,

Grappling love.

Link between water and air,

Earth repels you.

Light touches you only to shift to iridescence

Upon your body and wings.

Twice-born, predator,

You split into the heat.

Swift beyond calculation or capture

You dart into the shadow

Which consumes you.

You rocket into the day.

But at last, when the wind flattens the grasses,

For you, the design and purpose stop.

And you fall

With the other husks of summer.

Take Heart: A Conversation in Poetry is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. Poem copyright © 1996 Louise Bogan. Reprinted from The Blue Estuaries, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, LLC, copyright renewed 1996 by Ruth Lemmer. Questions about submitting to Take Heart may be directed to Gibson Fay-LeBlanc at mainepoetlaureate@gmail.com or (207) 228-8263.

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