Afternoon

[rejectomorph]

The sun has returned, and the air is full of crane flies. I see a group of them over the dying lawn in the back yard of the vacant house next door. These insects are among my favorites. Neither their narrow, translucent wings nor their improbably long, almost hair-thin legs seem as though they would be able to support the weight of their stick-like bodies. I enjoy the whirring sound of their flight, and the way that, when trapped in the house, they always manage to find their way to a window screen to try to escape. I often open the screen for them, and watch them fly away. I wonder if they feel something like frustration when they are trapped, and something like delight when they are freed?

If bugs are capable of delight, those flying about today must be filled with it. If the feeling is alien to them, at least they are capable of producing it for me. So, too, does the scene of which they are a part. The grass is a pale golden brown, with a few small dabs of green where the hardier drought-tolerant weeds have sprung up. There are a few tattered bushes, some with long-dead flowers still clinging to them. There is the weathered fence, leaning a bit, its boards a dark reddish-brown streaked with grey, and, beyond the sunlit yard, a patch of woods, pines and oaks dappling one another with shade. Over it all, there is the empty blue sky of summer. I think I'll open the screen and let myself out.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I've seen an elephant fly but never a crane.
Santa Ana