Kiss of death
(after an image by photojournalist Gerald Herbert)
That little tragedian, the dragonfly,
wings smeared with earth’s black blood,
stands glued to its stem like an orator.
It will never leave this soapbox now.
Just hangs there spread-eagled, a wee-Jesus
on a crucifix of grass. Some undertaker
draped its rainbow in a shroud of pitch,
shined its tar-ball shoes, closed those onyx
eyes for good. It has become an effigy
of itself. It wanted to tell us that it died
for our sins. But its lips are sealed.
This orator without a speech,
ne of the meek, so busy inheriting
the earth, it never noticed the evil tide
bubbling up from earth’s slit jugular,
it never saw that drop of gleaming crude
on Judas’s lip.
