DRAGONFLY

WHAT IT IS

He surmised the dragonflies were slower because it was late in the season, their usual frantic darting about now replaced with deliberate hovering as they looked for scarce meals. For reasons not clear to him, this behavior reminded Jared of his adolescence when he and his father trudged into unfamiliar neighbourhoods with offerings of canned goods, boxed macaroni, and turkeys or hams.

Jared became agitated as this season of giving approached, when his parents and their friends would work themselves up in a frenzy of twisted conflected generosity and distribute alms to the poor. Jared loathed this ritual and could take no pleasure in the feeble contributions made to these poor individuals.  In fact, he felt somehow complicit in creating their circumstance with his family having so much and others not much at all. What irked Jared the most were the self-congratulatory ones who were so high on themselves and their deeds that they failed to see it was the misery of others that fueled their rocket.

The dance of the dragonfly is never ending, this dance must go on forever not only to alleviate the conscience but to categorize these souls into the boxes we have created. The dance is not about elucidation:  that has been solved and rejected thousands of years ago.  And now with our addiction to consumption, it will be a thousand years hence. Jared watched the dragonflies, pleased they needed  or wanted nothing from him.

WHAT IT IS NOT

On a privately owned left- handed dirt track some eight and a half furlongs long, just outside Greenbury Indiana, a dragon fly rested on top of a flagpole watching the Flowtron BK-150 zap mosquitoes as the evening light vanished into the bullying night. The unfolding drama was indeed a drama, with the night creatures readying to put on their act and the day creatures beginning their retirement. Cast members from both camps scuttled about, taking up their places and waiting for the final curtain to fall. The dragonfly loved this time of day.

From his perch high above the racetrack, he watched as a black SUV came into sight and slowly crawled along the driveway stopping not far from the flagpole. Two men got out, the driver, a large heavy set fellow, was the first to exit followed soon by a smaller man with soft brown features, wide blue eyes and a neatly trimmed chin strap beard. The second man held a steel suitcase, placed it on the ground and opened it. A flash of blue light rose up from the suitcase and formed a horseshoe pattern against the night sky. The other man, the bigger one, reached into a paper bag marked Coyote Apples and tossed an apple into the light. The apple disappeared, then reappeared, a bit larger, about a hundred feet away.

The dragonfly’s head twitched from side to side as he flexed his four wings preparing for take off. He flew directly into the blue light, disappeared briefly, then found himself sitting on a mound of horse dung in the middle of the race track.