A basso snarl and rumble.
It is the graceless note,
a Doppler symphony of rude
rising and falling noise, from diminuendo to death.
out of place and time,
out of any bounds of nature.
Another helicopter,
monstrous green cliché of dragonfly,
stripped of all shine, all glow, all colors of joy,
and any disruption of soul—
for if a dragonfly flies soulless, what does not?—
interrupts.
The television flicks back on inside my head.
It makes itself heard, felt:
throbs its fearful threats of dire security.
But still, the sound from the garden fountain—
quieter, softer, more nearly pure—
outplays the nattering of the television mind.
More helicopters.
Our desert garden enters the dank hyper-oxygenated
carboniferous age of the original dragonfly,
the demon-fly of primal jungle,
soggy and explosive at one time,
Foggy Bottom on napalm injections.
Helicopters fumble over us more
often these days than before.
Their peace roars to signal at me
the vague and airy perils
they would protect me from
to the near-end of my days.