Kirsten Dierking: "The Ordinary"

It's summer, so
the pink gingham shorts,
the red mower, the neat rows
of clean smelling grass
unspooling behind
the sweeping blades.

A dragonfly, black body
big as a finger, will not leave
the mower alone,
loving the sparkle
of scarlet metal,
seeing in even a rusting paint
the shade of a flower.

But I wave him off,
conscious he is
wasting his time,
conscious I am
filling my time
with such small details,
distracting colors,

like pink checks,
like this, then that,
like a dragonfly wing
in the sun reflecting
the color of opals,
like all the hours
we leave behind,
so ordinary,
but not unloved.


 

"The Ordinary" by Kirsten Dierking. Text as published in Northern Oracle: Poems (Spout Press, 2007). © Kirsten Dierking. Reprinted by permission of the poet.

Art credit: A "close-up of the wing of a Green Darner dragonfly," macroscopic photograph by Paul Kelly.