Inahata Teiko

Did I have any idea what I was getting myself into when I announced this topic? No, I did not. I had no idea that so many people would send me so much varied and amazing poetry about dragonflies. Just as I had no idea there were so many kinds of dragonflies until I started doing a little (okay, a lot) of research…

I’ll launch into the poetry in a minute, but first off, for those among you who like me have to know every. single. thing. there is to know. about something before you can possibly just enjoy reading about it (yes, we are annoying)… here is the Wikipedia article on dragonflies (which fascinatingly contains an entire section on the role dragonflies play in Japanese culture and even references haiku) and here is the page on dragonfly kigo from Gabi Greve’s World Kigo Database.

Okay, I’ll shut up now and let you enjoy this dream of dragonflies.

_________________________________________________________________________

(Photo by Jay Otto)

aki no ki no akatombo ni sadamarinu

The beginning of autumn,
Decided
By the red dragon-fly.

— Shirao, translated by R.H. Blyth
.

toogarashi hane o tsukereba akatonbo

red pepper
put wings on it
red dragonfly

— Basho, translated by Patricia Donegan

(Photo by Jay Otto)

a dragonfly lands
on a stranded paper boat…
summer’s end

— Polona Oblak, Crows and Daisies

within his armful
of raked leaves
this lifeless dragonfly

— Kirsten Cliff, Swimming in Lines of Haiku

(Artwork and poetry by Rick Daddario, 19 Planets)

dragonflies
the soft blur of time
in another land

(Photo by Jay Otto)

out of myself just briefly dragonfly

.
adding a touch
of blue to the breeze –
dragonfly
(Magnapoets Issue 4 July 2009)

.
fading light –
everything the dragonfly
has to say

— Paul Smith, Paper Moon

(Artwork by Amy Smith, The Spider Tribe’s Blog)

a crimson darter
skims the mirror-lake…
your lips on mine
tomorrow
may never come
.

twisting and turning
a dragonfly splits
a ray of light …
he says he loves me
in his own way

(Simply Haiku Winter 2011)
.

catching
the blue eye of the breeze
dragonfly

(Simply Haiku Spring 2011)

— Claire Everett, At the Edge of Dreams

(Photo by Jay Otto)

on the water lily
remains of a dragonfly
morning stillness

(Evergreen English Haiku, 1995)
.

from sedge
to sedge to sedge
dragonfly
.

with a few brushstrokes the dragonfly comes alive
.

autumn dragonfly
waning
like the moon
a few scarlet leaves
silently fall
.

— Pamela A. Babusci

(Artwork by Rick Daddario, 19 Planets)

Dragonfly rising
everything shining
in the wind
.

Gold dragonflies
crisscross the air in silence:
summer sunset
.

A cirrus sky
one hundred dark dragonflies
with golden wings

— Kris Lindbeck, Haiku Etc.

(Photo by Jay Otto)

The dragon-fly,
It tried in vain to settle
On a blade of grass.

— Basho, translated by R.H. Blyth
.

The dragon-fly
Perches on the stick
That strikes at him.

— Kohyo, translated by R.H. Blyth
.

the instant it flies up
a dragonfly
loses its shadow

— Inahata Teiko (1931-), translated by Makoto Ueda

(Artwork by Rick Daddario, 19 Planets)

red dragonfly
on my shoulder, what
rank do I have?
.

spiderweb down,
a damselfly touches
my lips

— Michael Nickels-Wisdom
.

born in the year
of the dragon-
fly!

— Mary Ahearn

(Photo by Jay Otto)

sunset
from the tip of my shoe
the red dragonfly

(South by Southeast 18:2)

dew on grasses
the dragonflies
are gone
.

in a wrinkle
of light
dragonfly
.

— Donna Fleischer, word pond

(Poetry by Melissa Allen; illustration clip art)

through and through the gate dragonfly

— Melissa Allen

coupling dragonflies
at break-neck speed—
HOT!

(Modern Haiku 35.1)

— Susan Diridoni

(Photo by Jay Otto)

on the dried husk
that was an iris blossom
black dragonfly
.

we came here
seeking solitude
the loon
the dragonfly
and the speedboat

— Christina Nguyen, A wish for the sky…

(Artwork by Kitagawa Utamaro: “Red Dragonfly and Locust [Aka tonbo and Inago]”, from Picture Book of Selected Insects with Crazy Poems [Ehon Mushi Erabi]). From the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City.)

this brief life a dragonfly
.

dragonfly
where there is water
a path
.
— angie werren, feathers

tombô ya ni shaku tonde wa mata ni shaku

dragonfly–
flying two feet
then two feet more

— Issa, translated by David G. Lanoue

(Photo by Jay Otto)

a break in the rain…
the stillness
of the dragonfly

— sanjuktaa, wild berries

dragonfly—
how much of me
do you see?

— Alegria Imperial, jornales

noonday heat
dragonflies slice
the still air

(South by Southeast Vol. 12 #1)

— T.D. Ingram, @haikujots (on twitter)

evening breeze
teetering on its perch
a red dragonfly

  (Haiku Pix Review, summer 2011)

.— G.R. LeBlanc, Berry Blue Haiku

high notes
a red dragonfly skims
across the sound

— Margaret Dornaus, Haiku-Doodle

(Haiga by Polona Oblak, Crows and Daisies)

the heat
between downpours
blue dragonflies

— Mark Holloway, Beachcombing for the Landlocked

Steel blue flash
flies wing
drifts
— Robert Mullen

dragonfly dreams
the hospital intercom
repeats her name
.
with the password
to her sanity
darting dragonfly
.
iridescent dragonfly
hard to see
how her Ph.D. matters
.
tell me the old stories
one last time
convalescent dragonfly
.
discharge papers
the dragonfly returns home
on new meds
.
letting go of her walker
she lifts into the night sky
dragonfly
.
— Susan Antolin, Artichoke Season

Multimedia Interlude:

Sick of everything around here being flat and quiet? I found some moving stuff that makes noise for you too.

First, there’s this amazing (very) short film by Paul Kroeker of the last moments of a dragonfly’s life, which I discovered via Donna Fleischer at word pond. It’s set to music and is incredibly compelling:

http://www.petapixel.com/2011/08/11/spontaneous-and-creative-short-film-of-a-dying-dragonfly-shot-with-a-canon-7d/

Second, there are several versions of the well-known Japanese folk song (I mean, well-known to the Japanese) Aka Tombo, which means “Red Dragonfly.” This is apparently an indispensable part of every Japanese child’s upbringing. There are an almost infinite number of variations of this on YouTube so if these four aren’t enough for you, feel free to go noodling around over there looking for more.

Female vocalists

Male vocalists

Instrumental

With upbeat dance backing track added

and on this general theme…

perched on bamboo grass
the low notes
of a dragonfly

(Haiku inspired by Tif Holmes’s Photo-Haiku Project: http://tifholmesphotography.com/cphp/2011/07/july-2011-series-entry-11/)

— Kathy Nguyen (A~Lotus), Poetry by Lotus

for when even
the music stops—
dragonfly wings

— Aubrie Cox, Yay words!

(Photo by Jay Otto)

mid-morning
a dragonfly and I
bound for Mississippi
.

in and out of view
the computer-drawn dragonfly
on the web page

— Tzetzka Ilieva
.

dragonfly
at 60 miles per hour
those giant eyes

— Johnny Baranski

(Photo by Jay Otto)

first impressions
a dragonfly hovers
before landing

— Cara Holman, Prose Posies

— Linda Papanicolaou, Haiga Online

In this forest glade
The snail gone, a dragonfly lights
On the mushroom cap

— P. Allen

‘Oh! Catch it!’

‘I heard they eat their own tails’

When I was a child, living on an Air Force base in Okinawa, it was a common belief, among the elementary school set, a dragonfly would eat itself if you caught it and fed it its own tail. I looked online and didn’t find any references to this notion so maybe we were all sniffing the good Japanese glue.

Anyhow, even though we constantly snagged lizards and grasshoppers and cicadas, I never saw any one ever catch a dragonfly, as common as they were.

dragonfly
we play in the puddles
afraid to get close

— Steve Mitchell, Heed Not Steve

(Photo by Jay Otto)

dragonfly—
wings vibrating
on the rock face
(From the sequence “Ten Haiku: For the Dodge Tenth Anniversary Hike” in The Monkey’s Face)

dragonfly
on my fingernail
looks at me
(From Wind in the Long Grass, edited by William J. Higginson [Simon & Schuster, Books for Young Readers, 1991])

— Penny Harter, Penny Harter homepage, A Poet’s Alphabestiary, Etc.

An old tree
No bud and no leaf
full of dragonflies.

— @vonguyenphong22 (on Twitter)

neti neti
a dragonfly hums
raga Megh
(raga Megh(a)=a raga for the monsoon season. Neti neti= a key expression from the Upanishads: “not this nor this” or “not this nor that” alluding to the essence of things.)
.

”the sky’s gone out”
on the radio – and then
a dragonfly
.

dragonfly –
I mark an unpaid bill
“later”

— Johannes S.H. Bjerg, 2 tongues/2 tunger