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As a child, have you tried chasing dragonflies across a meadow? Or watched them skim over brooks and pools of rain water? Some memories live like dragonflies. They can suddenly glide in, or glide out of view. Repeatedly, yet elusively. Catch them, and they catch you, and close the gap between the Then and the Now.

gliders

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we used to run after
colorful dragonflies

way back in the years
of a tender age,

they would come in
bright pure colors

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of red, pink, orange,
green, yellow,

blue, black or white,
sometimes with

shades and hues
mixed and sprinkled

over their bodies,
heads and wings,

gliding again and
again and again

over puddles, marshes
and streams,

lots of them
usually emerging

after the rains,
we would entrap them

with fine coconut-leaf
midrib sticks,

treated with sticky sap
of fruit trees, sometimes

some of their wings,
or a leg or two,

would break off their
alternately curling and

stretching bodies,
or their heads would roll

down our palms
as they struggle

in our fingers,
i could not be so sure now

if they were happy
memories,

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© SSJ 2011

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