on the wetland path, dark beams flash past. the first dragonflies of the season. they skim the reeds from side to side, wings stretched out like solar panels.
they draw me to stillness, points of focus always facing forward no matter the direction of their movement. their wings are optimized for maneuverability, networks of elastic veins bending dexterously with the wind. fore- and hindwings swivel independently, enabling sharp motions and sudden shifts.
I watch the careful choreographies of these beauties on the hunt. there’s a certain laid-back nonchalance to this group of five or six. maybe they have just awoken, sensing into their new bodies. they surf upon the air’s microcurrents with casual composure, the way professional figure skaters make their disciplined footwork appear effortless.
when I think of dragonflies, I think of Artemis, Greek goddess of the hunt, patron of wild animals and vegetation. I think of her arrows, piercing through sun-burnt skies with the intense accuracy of a dragonfly on a mission.
like Artemis, dragonflies rely on their vision above all weaponry. between a dragonfly’s pair of compound eyes sits three simple ones called ocelli. researchers have confirmed a direct neural connection from a dragonfly’s ocelli to the motor centers of their brain. shadows detected by the ocelli trigger immediate somatic response. in Indian spirituality, the third eye houses the ajna chakra, gateway to inner wisdom. informed by the ocelli’s instinct, unperturbed by indecision, a dragonfly’s movement recalls the third eye’s immediate knowing.
intuition may be associated with the element of water, the place where dragonflies come from. a dragonfly egg hatches on or near water, with their first stage of life spent as an aquatic nymph. Artemis watches over dragonflies at this stage as well. in some regions she bore the name Limnaea, Lady of the Lake, and guarded nymphs’ sacred springs and wells. as larvae underwater, dragonfly nymphs sense prey not by sight, but by the intimacy of water’s touch. here too they are hunters. their antennae discern ripples of plankton from the vibrations of tadpoles. perhaps this is where the immediacy of their kinesthetic knowing comes from, their sensitivity to the physical impact of fluid sound waves translated to an ability to discern subtle shifts in air’s weight.
for indeed, as months pass and skins molt, a time comes when a dragonfly nymph hears the sky above calling. preparing for breath by air, it clings to a rock or stem as its exoskeleton peels away. in the safety of dawn, its thorax swells and its wings fill with hemolymph, outstretching from base to tip. fueled by the rising sun, the fledgling dragonfly departs on its maiden flight.
is this what I am watching, the first wingstrokes of these dragonflies’ airborne lives? in their wings’ crystalline translucence, freshly pumped with fluid, I see how they bring the aquatic to the air. they belong to both places now, for though they can no longer breathe water in, they must survive by returning to it: to drink, to mate, to lay eggs.
I watch how the early spring light refracts off their skittering wings, crossing with the sun’s incandescent reflections in the pools beneath them. I’d like to think they are playing here, basking in the warmth before the hunt takes over, still dreaming of the place they came from and will return to in the end.
light, strike through me as if I were a dragonfly, blood filling out my wings, carrying water into the sky. let me touch the heights with the depths still inside, bringing my dark-nymph dreams into the starkness of day. make my movement as a dragonfly’s arrow, a focus so coalesced and iridescent—
— m.a.r.