Issue Thirty-Nine - Winter 2022

Poems Out of Music

By Christopher Nye

Fanny Mendelssohn, Piano Sonata in G minor, Scherzo

Dragonfly

I see you darn the autumn air
at the lake’s edge,
back and forth,
back and forth,
as if the fabric of sunlight
and shadow needed repair,
and this frayed seam
where water meets land
could not go into winter
without your skilled attention.
Blue needle
on transparent wings,
you cruise into swarms
of gnats and snap them
out of the morning air.
Your compound eyes
that cannot close
see the wide arc
of lake and reeds,
reflections of trees, vast sky
the same blue as your body.
Can you see what I can’t–
maybe sylphs that ride and relish
the burgeoning breeze?
I suppose you
cannot know joy or regret,
yet you touch the tripwire
for a flood of thoughts
and make me wonder
why I am on earth at all,
alone by the lake
on a Sunday morning
before the heat has
climbed into the day.

MUSIC: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymZH2ozb4Gc&t=0s
from 3:24 to 6:52

Copyright Nye 2022

Christopher Nye 's poetry has previously appeared in SHARK REEF, also Snowy Egret, Chautauqua, Orbis, Kentucky Poetry Review, Pegasus, Berkshire Review, and elsewhere, including anthologies. His most recent publications are a children’s picture book, The Old Shepherd’s Tale, and a book titled Poems Out of Thin Air. He has a Ph. D. in American Studies from the University of New Mexico and studied playwriting on a Fulbright at the University of Bristol in England. Currently he is interim executive director at Orion Magazine.

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