Swarm Day

It wasn’t quite Texas-hot, but it was a reasonable facsimile thereof. 91F, and it’s supposed to be the same for the rest of the week. No rain in sight. It looks like September, but it feels July-ish.

When I arrived home and stepped out into the front yard, I was immediately under attack. At least once a year, we get what I call Dragonfly Day, a hot afternoon in which clouds of dragonflies make their appearance. And I don’t mean “a lot” of dragonflies. I mean “Could someone please call Ramses II and let him know that another one of those plagues is going down?”-sized swarms of the things. They came in waves, and that’s an apt simile, because they ebbed and flowed, crashed and eddied, and tsunami-ed the ridge on which our house sits. Near sundown, they disappeared almost all at once. A mysterious and beautiful and compelling occurrence. I’m pleased that I was home to see a lot of it. I tried to get a photo, but the results were not impressive.

Mondays have a bad reputation, and this one seemed to fit into the stereotype. At times today, I sat and listened to conversations between my coworkers that made me almost physically ill. My awareness of how out of place I am among people who are at home and comfortable in this present age grows by the hour.

To stiff-arm some of the worst of the jabberings and vulgarieis of the day, I placed my thoughts back to the weekend, which was a mellow and peaceful two days in our home. Early morning walks, puttering around outside in the yard, washing the vehicles, arguing with my dog, reading so much my eyes are sore, writing so much that I still have an indentation in my right index finger from the pencil. I call it my Faberprint. I sharpened my mugful of pencils while sitting outside, and later I noticed the finches picking through the delicate, fan-like shavings I left on the grass.

A neighbor who lives nearby has been harvesting corn for silage for his cattle for the winter. My, my…that’s a lot of “for’s” in one sentence, but it just seemed to flow, so be patient with me, friends. Anyway, my neighbor has been bringing in silage and piling it in a pit down the road from us. Our morning walks were scented with the cidery tang of the silage, a very autumnal aroma.  The silage pit is a big draw for various scavengers. Yesterday morning when I was approaching the bend in the road where the silage pit is located, I smiled to see a group of doves in the gravel road, feasting on bits of silage that the front-loader had spilled. Nothing is wasted in the world of those who truly work for their food.

The night is quiet here, and the moon’s light is calming and steady. I think I’ll leave you with a sweet little song by the master of the fretboard, Chet Atkins.

~ S.K. Orr