The pond
in morning
teems
with hawking
defending
attacking
mating
ovipositing.
Frogs yelp and splash,
one green heron ack-acks,
and a small airplane
flies over, out and back,
sightseeing, I suppose.
That's what I was doing:
seeing the sights,
including this female
Amber-winged Spreadwing,
contentedly
steadily
hanging from a branch
tipped by a Slaty Skimmer,
Auzure Bluet,
and Blue Dasher.
The dragonflies push
off, bouncing the branch,
but she remains still.
I still approach,
close enough to
make eye contact.
"If you mean 'absolutely' in the sense of 'completely', then no. The celebrated uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics shows that the more precisely we try to pin down the exact location of anything to tell if it's stationary, the more it jitters about. On the other hand, if you mean 'absolutely still' in the sense of stationary with respect to the whole Universe, then yes - at least, subject to the above caveat. The Universe is filled with radiation left over from the Big Bang, and this provides a reference frame by which we can tell how fast we're moving in absolute terms, and in what direction. In 1996, a team of NASA scientists showed that we on planet Earth are moving at around 1,340,000km/h relative to the Universe as a whole." -- Christopher Watts
Nothing at Lake Cheston is ever still.
Thank heavens.
