Photographing dragonflies is easier than one might think; many of them are comfortable having a human nearby. When I look, up close, at a dragonfly, I remind myself that the dragonfly is also looking at me—through as many as thirty thousand lenses. What does a dragonfly see that I can’t see when I look in a mirror?

What I see when I get a close look at a dragonfly are eyes like polished gems, brush-like spikes on its head and legs, and iridescent wings that look like they belong on the most regal of fairies. In my yard, dragonflies are blue, green, black, gold, and multi-colored. If I travel about half a mile down the road, I see orange dragonflies.

Dragonfly symbolism differs from culture to culture, but the dominant theme involves change and transcendence; the dragonfly symbolizes the part of us that needs to move on, to overcome obstacles, and to take risks.

I am a writer, and for the last several years my primary medium has been poetry. I’m no stranger to writer’s block, and when I experience it, I don’t worry—the ability to write always returns. However, several weeks ago, my ability to write went away and showed no sign of coming back. I decided to write a sonnet, which is my usual exercise when I want to stimulate my poetry writing. (I once had a teacher who said that “form is a substitute for inspiration,” and I have found that to be true.)

But this time, nothing was happening. The more I looked at the sonnet, the more I felt lost, even though I liked the first few lines. Finally, I just left it alone because it was too frustrating to work on constructing it. I was also dealing with an injury and with sleep issues, and it seemed that my brain—at least the creative part of it—had shut down.

From a suite of dragonfly photographs by Diane Elayne Dees.

I have a large bay window in my house, and one morning, I noticed that a male blue dasher was perched on a twig that had gotten stuck in the leaves of a shrub right outside that window. I went outside to photograph it and it let me get very close.

A couple of years ago, I was photographing a blue dasher when it initiated a game: It would fly off its perch—a bird feeder pole—buzz around my head, fly toward the roof, fly back to the perch, then go through the whole routine again. It did this over and over until, finally, I grew tired of the game, in which my only job was to stand there while the dragonfly had all the fun.

I thought of that blue dasher as I took photos of the one outside my bay window. I wondered if it would fly around me. When it didn’t, I went inside; but then, about fifteen minutes later, I noticed it was still there. I kept an eye on it, and observed that it would stay frozen in that spot for about fifteen minutes, fly just a short distance away, then return. This went on for hours. Finally, I went back outside to take an even closer look at my visitor.

What happened next surprised me. I dared to do something I had never done before—I touched its wing. It rose up, buzzed a complete circle around my hand, then went back to its perch. Then it raised its wings slightly, and I touched its abdomen (which, on a dragonfly, is the entire long part of its body). We looked at each other. I wasn’t sure if I had done the right thing; perhaps I should have let the dragonfly make the decision about whether to touch me. I had held my hand out next to it, but it hadn’t responded, so—for better or worse—I initiated the contact.

Not long ago, I read Sy Montgomery’s wonderful book, The Soul of an Octopus. Throughout the book, as she describes the many intense feelings she has while interacting with octopuses, she wonders what they are feeling. I identified completely with that as I stood, eye to eye, with the dragonfly I had just touched. I felt overcome with awe of this curious beauty with the stained-glass wings. I wished that we could talk with each other, but then I realized we didn’t need to.

My visitor stayed for six and a half hours. About ten minutes after he left, he returned for just a moment, landed on the twig, and fluttered his wings as though he were taking a bow. Then he departed for good. Not long after that, I sat down and, with relative ease, wrote a rondel about the experience. The poem simply “arrived,” as poems sometimes do. The next day, I was able to complete my sonnet.

Not long after that incident, a young female blue dasher appeared on a very slim branch of a tree that stands not too far from the same window. She stayed there all afternoon, then returned the next day, and again she stayed on her perch for several hours. She visited the branch every day, sometimes in the morning, sometimes in the afternoon.

At first, when I approached her, she would back away or even fly off, but then a ritual developed: When she saw me (through her 30,000 lenses), she would back away, then fly toward me and land on the tip of the branch. Sometimes she would bob her head from side to side.

One day, I went out to see her and discovered that the young dragonfly on the branch was a male. Since he seemed to be about the same age as the first one, I wondered if they were sister and brother. He was skittish when I approached, but he remained on the branch. Then a pattern developed—he would stay for a couple of days, then she would return and stay for a couple of days, but they never came around together.

It didn’t take long for the male to become comfortable with my presence, and he, too, would move to the front of the branch when he saw me. One day, in fact, after he moved to the front of the branch, he lifted himself up, briefly buzzed my head, then ascended to another tree.

A couple of weeks later, they changed their pattern to every other day, and about a week after that, one began to take the morning shift and the other would take the afternoon shift. But there was more to come. A second male, even younger, joined the group, and took on the same approachable behaviors with me. On a couple of occasions, I saw two of them buzzing in circles above the limb.

From a suite of dragonfly photographs by Diane Elayne Dees.

As I write this, it is early October and it has turned suddenly cool—the little dragonflies are gone, and I already miss them. The limb looks stark and empty without them. Dragonflies—who spend their lengthy childhoods submerged under water—can live as adults up to a year, but many live only a month.

I have no idea where my little trio is headed or how long they will survive. I wonder what effect, if any, their constant interaction and play with a human had on them. I do know the effect that they—and the adult blue dasher—had on me: I am writing again. I have transcended writer’s block, but—more important—I have taken another step in establishing a connection with one of my favorite creatures. The dragonfly is beautiful, complicated, and engaging. The dragonfly is my muse—the dragonfly is my friend.

September 12

by Andrea Carter Brown

  On 9/11, Andrea Carter Brown was a resident of downtown Manhattan living just a block from the World Trade Center. September 12 chronicles her up close and all too personal experience of the attack, but, even more, the continuing horror and eventual healing of the months and years afterward. September 12 won the 2022 IPPY Silver Medal in Poetry, the James Dickey Prize from Five Points, the River Styx International Poetry Prize, the Puddinghouse Press Chapbook Competition, The MacGuffin National Poet Hunt, and is cited in the Library of Congress Online Research Guide to the Poetry of 9/11. “A more haunting memorial to 9/11 than this book will be hard to find. Reading September 12 is a wrenching but restorative experience you won't soon forget".  — Martha Collins, poet, author of Casualty Reports and Blue Front "... detail by detail, we watch the process of innocence captured by absolutely unpredicted trauma, and how the experience lives on and on, through shock and terror, through the kindness of strangers, through the heart of a beloved, through grief and elegy, through normality that will never again be normal."  — Alicia Ostriker, New York State Poet Laureate "This brave book documents great loss, but also hard-won psychic resilience in poems of astonishing beauty and wisdom. September 12 is necessary poetry." — Cynthia Hogue, Poetry Editor, Persimmon Tree

Available from Amazon and Word Works.

Find this and more in ArtsMart