THE BANDED DEMOISELLE

If Ezekiel’s watchman, or, rather, God’s

had been on the job there would have been

some sort of heads-up – a cornet perhaps

if not a fanfare – that the Parish Church clock,

put in place in 1867,

would be chiming again, hours and quarters,

this summer morning. But it just happens –

almost surreptitiously, like some

member of the chorus in an opera

sneaking on late from the wings. And late it is

by a few minutes – as before it was fast.

Such churlishness, some would say, is tantamount

to treason – as the Prime Minister

of one of the earth’s richest countries,

though singlehandedly it seems fighting off

phalanxes of invisible foes, finds time

to fly to the Orkneys for a photo-op

with a couple of large crabs on the deck

of a trawler in Kirkwall harbour,

and speak with officer-class passion about

the abstract benefits of the Union –

the English monarchy’s first colonies –

whose strength has helped us through…and will again…

As Benjamin Franklin – who chased lightning,

with an iron rod, on a horse – once said, “Tricks

and Treachery are the practice of fools,

that do not have brains enough to be honest”.

And I recall that the name of the church –

built in local sandstone for a burgeoning,

provincial bourgeoisie – is All Saints,

so no bases or bets left uncovered there.

Nevertheless, when I hear the chimes

and watch my live-in gardener – whom

I have loved for nearly sixty years –

building a rockery in assorted stone

with alpines and lavender, there is some sense

of re-setting if not re-winding the clock.

Suddenly, out of the purple buddleia –

an import from China, nationalists

should note, that self-seeds particularly well

in ravaged, industrial wastelands –

a dragonfly appears, metallic green,

with fluttering wings, translucent, pale,

and disappears somewhere beyond the hosta

and the agapanthus. I learn, instantly,

it was a female banded demoiselle,

its habitat slow-moving muddy streams.

Beneath the garden and the house – a fort

against the dark – was a pond and a brook

speculative builders filled with rubble

more than two decades before the church was built.

That fragile creature of breath-taking beauty,

like a prophetess, divined the lost waters.