Anisoptera
Puffy white clouds migrated lazily across the blue sky, drifting noncommittally elsewhere. I stood in the garden with a basket on my arm, clipping white roses with scissors. Spotting a beetle in one bloom, I set it at the bush's base to allow it a safe return to its beetle business. Big black bumble bees were humming noisily around me. We managed to weave around each other as we do-si-dod from bush to bloom on our separate errands.
A pair of hummingbirds engaged in a dog-fight dove into the garden. Just as rapidly, they climbed back up through the air to a distant height. It left me blinking. The buzzing of the bees changed tone momentarily as they registered the disturbance. Then we all got back to work. A pair of ladybugs was still sleeping on mint leaves in the shade. As I clipped another big white bloom, it poured droplets of rainwater, captured in a storm the day before, down my arm. A rare treat to be bathed in rose-infused rainwater. I thought a better blessing than this wasn’t possible.
A new buzz joined in with that of the bees, and I turned to see who was making the new noise. Something was moving fast among the bees, a barely there streak of color. As I watched, this new character flew past my nose and landed on a tomato trellis less than a foot from my cheek. It was a gorgeous, rust-colored dragonfly. He moved his head in quick jerky animal motions as he looked around, then he tucked his foremost legs up almost behind his head, as if to recline.
We regarded each other. I’ve rarely had a visit from a dragonfly and didn’t think I should expect it would happen again soon, so I stayed as long as I could. He stayed too. And I had thought that a better blessing than a rose-infused rainwater baptism wasn’t possible! Here now was a master of transformation; a creature who spent the first half of his existence as a naiad in the murky depths of a pond and now zips through the empyreal light, a jewel-toned dragonfly. I listened carefully to his sermon and received a benediction. Then I returned to my human business.