Scaly serpent writhes

Amid rough and tumbled rocks;

God created all.

Latticed flakes, feather light,

Floated like eider down

And lightly lingered

Upon eyelashes aflutter,

Cheeks aglow and nosetips in freeze.

Amid the snowy florets

In the winter hush,

My footfalls muffled

In the downy pavement.

I walked with upturned face

Where crystalline blooms,

In whispering touches,

Winked and vanished.

In candy sugar ice,

The twigs and branches

Gleamed in fairy luster

In the charmed wood

Where the pathway crossed.

Winter’s brittle splendor,

In ethereal sheen,

Wafted me to enchantment

Aloft myriad graces

Into intimate magic, and,

Alas, a world of transience.

The summer was balmy

And the air hung like Indian muslin.

A somnolent lethargy overtook me

As I lay in my hammock

By the pond, hidden among weeds,

Whose surface shone speckled

By water’s sheen breaking through pondscum.

A sudden stir in the air above pond,

A glimmer of irridiscent colors!

A dragonfly was flitting upon the pond,

Transparent wings flashing colors

From metallic patches-

Red, brown, yellow, blue .

Helicoptering above, it lit

Upon a lily pad, compound eyes swirling

Its encircling globular vision searching, 

A predator seeking prey.

But Fate decrees its tragic moments.

The unwary dragonfly foolishly forgot

The predator in the shallows.

A sudden splash and whiplike motion!

A bullfrog leapt up mouth opening,

Flicking its long and sticky tongue out,

And captured the hapless dragonfly.

Thus marked the end

Of a predator by a predator.