The Brazilian poet Mário Quintana was quoted to have said, “Don’t waste your time chasing butterflies. Mend your garden, and the butterflies will come.” As a gardener, I can say that birds will come as soon as there’s a slightest sighting of fruits, flowers, a water puddle, or even just freshly tilled soil, but it’s not so easy to attract butterflies and dragonflies. Over the years, I have figured out the trick to attract dragonflies is to have a good-sized body of water, like a pond, with some vegetation living in it. It is because the female dragonfly only mates with a male who controls a territory near a water body, as she requires water to lay her eggs in it.
But the first sighting of a dragonfly is a sight for sore eyes, enough to make one’s heart jump a little. Dragonfly is a glamorous looking insect, winged in blue and orange, iridescent and translucent like stained glass window panes. They make me think of dream catchers, like one could really catch dreams with those glorious wings. While plants produce their own pigments to reflect a part of the light spectrum into colors, dragonflies make their blues through light diffraction. Their wings are composed of tiny, multi-layered structures that scatter light. The colors, resulting from interactions between the scattered light waves, function as cues for territorial contests. While she lays her eggs in the water, the male dragonfly stays on guard to fight off unwanted attention.
It’s no surprise that their beauty has inspired many a poet, particularly in East Asia, as the Japanese poet Issa humorously wrote in a haiku, “Have you come to save us haiku poets? Red dragonfly.” Their arrival marks the fall season, wrote the poet Hori Bakusui, “Dyed he is with the colour of autumnal days, O red dragonfly.” In the tropics, they foretell the rain: “it rains when dragonflies fly low, sunny when they fly high.” In monsoon regions, swarms of Globe Skimmer dragonflies leverage seasonal rain and wind to carry them across the Indian Ocean. They are the longest known distance insect travellers, migrating for more than 2500 Km without rest.
For some, they speak of nostalgia and loss. The poet Chiyo-ni wrote of her dead son, “My little dragonfly hunter, I wonder how far he has gone today.” Perhaps inspired by her haiku, Red House Painters wrote in their song Dragonflies:
“I wonder in what fields today
You’re chasing dragonflies at play
My little lost girl so far away.”
Inspired by the dragonfly, I have crafted this dress from a silk rectangle, embroidered with orange and blue dragonfly motifs. Atop the dress is meandering fabric patchwork to symbolize water, where the dragonflies converge. I, too, have written my own haiku to extol the dragonfly of my dream:
O the dragonfly’s
wings, stained like glass window panes.
A blue gleam of dream.
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