Death by Drowning

An underwater larva emerges from the water and becomes an air-breathing winged dragonfly. Most live air-borne only long enough to mate and ensure the survival of the species. But some die early.

Of drowning.

When I first learned this from reading, I was taken aback. An insect that had long lived under water drowns. That was one thing.

Seeing them drowned or drowning or being knocked into water by another of the same species is a whole other thing entirely.

Five today. I pulled out four -- those within reach, but only one survived (but I suspected she wouldn't for much longer because one wing was crimped). Not this one. He looked perfect, but he wasn't.

Every time I think I can make a difference.

Only sometimes can I.

October Thoughts

Beersheba Springs' Armfield Cemetery, established in 1871, holds a small number of graves, including the one for John Armfield himself. A partner in a large pre-Civil War slave trading business responsible for the sale of some 8,000 slaves, Armfield was also one of the founders of the University of the South and after the war owned the Beersheba Springs Hotel, which today is a Methodist Assembly.

Like the season itself -- of fallen leaves and shifting seasons, the cemetery might be viewed as a solemn and dark place, celebrating as it does the life of a man who sold people, but also a respectful memorial to the man committed to education of young men.

He, though, isn't what held me long in the cemetery. This did: a memorial of six joined hands.

I read the names of those remembered in stone (Bess T. Cason, Sue T. Gibson, Boneda T. Merritt, Robert W. Turner, Robert W. Turner Jr., Sally Wright Turner), but I do not know their life stories beyond their being family. 

I do know this: love lasts beyond the grave as long as a family member or friend lives, as long as their descendants live, even if in ignorance of the persons in their own direct and extended family tree.

This memorial reminds me of what I've lost, the family members now gone (one in October some years ago), but also of the connectedness we still share. I've seen no more touching marker.

Loss

takes many forms.

There are, of course, other Blue Dashers,

just as there are other people here and others to be here.

And, yes, I know that insects aren't people.

But still:

each one lost . . .

An Intentional Walk, Unintended Consequences

I went back to the Lake Dimmick area, hoping to find another Vesper Bluet. I started at the big pond, where I saw only Blue Corporals and a number of Azure Bluets. So windy and cold were the pond and shore that I lost my hat several times and finally gave up. 

I walked down to the boat launch pull-off at the lake, where "snot grass" grows. Several Facebook friends noted that the only Vesper Bluets they had seen were bodies of water with lily pads. I found what I was looking for -- one female Vesper Bluet.

And something else: a feather pile dotted with water drops, atop of which a spider dragged her egg ball.

Then, a few feet away, I noticed the bird's carcass in the water, its bill still parted its feet spread and caught in the reeds.

I don't know the species; I'll leave that to someone else. I don't know what happened; no one can. What I do know is that I left my walk feeling oddly dislocated and tired.

I found what I hoped for, and I left feeling sad.

Unexpected Death: One Known, Many Unknown

"If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come; the readiness is all. Since no man knows aught of what he leaves, what is't to leave betimes? Let be." -- Hamlet, V:ii:207-211.

Everything Can Be Beautiful, in the Just-right Light

The Odd Last Thing She did

by Brad Leithauser

A car is idling on the cliff.
Its top is down. Its headlights throw
A faint, bright ghost-shadow glow
On the pale air. On the shore, so far
Below that the waves' push and drag
Is dwindled to a hush—a kind
Of oceanic idle—the sea

Among the boulders plays a blind-
Fold game of hide and seek,
Or capture the flag. The flag
Swells and sways. The car
Is empty. A Friday, the first week
Of June. Nineteen fifty-three.

A car's idling on the cliff,

But surely it won't be long before

Somebody stops to investigate

And things begin to happen fast:

Men, troops of men will come,

Arrive with blazing lights, a blast

Of sirens, followed by still more

Men. Though not a soul's in sight,

The peace of the end of the late

Afternoon—the sun down, but enough light

Even so to bathe the heavens from

Horizon to shore in a deep

And delicate blue—will not keep.

Confronted with such an overload

Of questions (most beginning, Why would she...

So gifted, bright, and only twenty-three),

Attention will come to fix upon

This odd last thing she did: leaving

The car running, the headlights on.

She stopped—it will transpire—to fill

The tank a mere two miles down the road.

(Just sixteen, the kid at the station will

Quote her as saying, "What a pity

You have to work today! It's not right...

What weather! Goodness, what a night

It'll be!" He'll add: "She sure was pretty.")

Was there a change of plan?

Why the stop for gas? Possibly

She'd not yet made up her mind? Or

Had made it up but not yet settled

On a place? Or could it be she knew

Where she was headed, what she would do—

And wanted to make sure the car ran

For hours afterward? Might the car not be,

Then, a sort of beacon, a lighthouse-

In-reverse, meant to direct one not

Away from but toward the shore

And its broken boulders, there to spot

The bobbing white flag of a blouse?

Her brief note, which will appear

In the local Leader, contains a phrase

("She chanted snatches of old lands")

That will muddle the town for three days,

Until a Professor E. H. Wade

Pins it to Ophelia—and reprimands

The police, who, this but goes to show,

Have not the barest knowledge of Shakespeare,

Else would never have misread "lauds"

As "lands." A Detective Gregg Messing

Will answer, tersely, "Afraid

It's not our bailiwick. Missing

Persons, yes; missing poems, no."

(What's truly tragic's never allowed

To stand alone for long, of course.

At each moment there's a crowd

Of clowns pressing in: the booming ass

At every wake who, angling a loud

Necktie in the chip dip,

Airs his problems with intestinal gas,

Or the blow-dried bonehead out to sell

Siding to the grieving mother . . . . Well,

Wade sent the Leader another briefword:

"Decades of service to the Bard now force

Me to amend the girl's little slip.

'Chaunted' not 'chanted' is the preferred . . .")

Yet none of her unshakeable entourage

—Pedants, pundits, cops without a clue,

And a yearning young grease-monkey—are

Alerted yet. Still the empty car

Idles, idles on the cliff, and night

Isn't falling so much as day

Is floating out to sea . . . . Soon, whether

She's found or not, her lights will draw

Moths and tiny dark-winged things that might

Be dirt-clumps, ashes. Come what may,

The night will be lovely, as she foresaw,

The first stars easing through the blue,

Engine and ocean breathing together.

Everybody Eats (Again)

This isn't for the squeamish.

Then again, neither is the natural order of things.

Eastern Pondhawk eating a male mating with a female Violet Dancer.
(I apologize for the video quality and size.)

Amazingly, the female survived, with the male's abdomen

still firmly clamped to her.

To Everything There Is a Season

and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

A time to be born, and a time to die . . . (Ecclesiastes 3)

In spring it's easy to see the signs of borning everywhere -- birds building nests, frogs and toads extruding and fertilizing eggs, dragonflies and damselflies being "born" into their final mature stages, lady's slippers shooting up their first furred leaves.

Even the lake, seen from afar, seems re-born in the soft hues of early spring.

But looks can be deceiving.

There, on the pinestraw-strewn hill in the distance, flies and maggots work away at the still bloody mess of what's left of a crow's head (beak, forehead, little else) dropped by some larger opportunistic predator, needing to feed himself or herself and perhaps the young coming or the biological processes of building up protein for the producing of another generation.

On University Avenue a little later, approaching the parish church, I saw a squirrel flop and flip, flop and flip, in its death throes. Just hit apparently by a car on my side of the road, the squirrel jolted, not consciously, I think, but mechanically, involuntarily, nerve-ously. I slowed and stopped, wondering if I could pass while the squirrel lay on the pavement, dying. How does one just drive by? The jerking soon stopped, and I passed and wondered, Did the driver cringe with the thunk and then just drive on?

The thing about walking and snapping and blogging is this: I see death and dying now almost every day, and every time, I am stilled. I may have bad dreams tonight.

I will try to think on the "time to be born."

Mortality in Mind

Seven years ago tomorrow, my sister-in-law of 43 years died, at the height of leaf season in the Western Carolina mountains, where she took in the view one last time.

I took in a favorite view today and thought of her, and of her children, and of her grandchildren, and of all who knew her.

If this is the last thing I see, it is enough.

Day 40: Another Day in My Life (Death on the Doorstep)

Amour still in mind days later, daddy-long-legs striding a yellow jacket, 

then this:

a Blue Corporal, one of the year's last, webbed, struggling to fly, signaling the spider who fought to win a terrifying battle.

And Iraq, imploding.

Thus ends Julie's challenge: 40 days of 40 words.

My Senses Shook

The air moistening and the sky graying, I thought I should leave the lake without making the full loop, but pressed on anyway.  I think I am glad I did.

On the path to the beach, something rustled ahead, and I looked, glimpsed gray feathers, thought Heron! and tiptoed on, careful not to startle the bird.  Closer, I focused on its head, the one yellow eye, the beak, and thought I could continue to sneak without frightening it.   Only much closer did I realize it seemed stuck in a vine, struggling to get to safety into the woods.  It flopped over, opened its wide wings, closed the left one, and sort of lumped onto the leaves.

Then I knew: it was injured.

I ran to the car, drove to Lynne's house (she had saved an owl and would know what to do).  We went to the lake, and she saw what I had missed: blood along the edge of the path.  She called Margaret (Margaret rescues birds) at two different numbers, found a message at both.  Then she called Lucia, who knew David's phone number, which Lynne called.  No answer.  We drove to David's house, rang the bell, but only Junebug answered with vigorous barking.  Then we went to the shop to get the cell number for Sarah, David's wife.  She didn't know where he was, but she would let him know. 

Within the hour while I readied for work, they returned to the bird.  David picked it up, found the leg torn away right into the bone, and moved the heron further into the woods.  Later, he dispatched it, writing "the heron's end was swift and probably painless.  Let's hope wherever its life goes after here is less broken."

Yes, let's hope.  And let's thank those who came to the rescue as a result of my chance encounter, one that has left "my senses shook," as Richard Wilbur wrote in "The Groundhog."

I shall miss watching that Great Blue Heron fish in the shallows.

Isn't S/he Lovely?

Last night's visitor clung to the splash back, just visible between hand soap and dish soap dispensers.
Jill says s/he was a wasp. Notice the waspish waist, she emailed.

Of course, I thought. Blinded by its surface, I never noticed, and I never wondered if s/he had a stinger.

Wasps are aggressive. I know that firsthand. Once, in Nashville years ago, I opened my front door at the top of rickety fire-escape stairs and was stung five to six times in the face and neck before I could scramble back down.

I didn't know wasps are so beautiful. The little bumps like embossed pebbles, the smiley face emerging above the joint of thorax and abdomen; the lemon yellow stripes; the Tiffany-glass-like amber wings; the stylish cropped bolero jacket like the kind Mother wore in the 1950s just covering the shoulder and upper arms; the graceful legs in yellow stockings though not cross-gartered like Malvolio's in Twelfth Night: isn't s/he lovely?

I thought s/he was dead at first until I saw her/him flutter a leg and try to crawl upwards. I cupped the little beauty in a glass and moved her/him outside to the deck, thinking the wasp wanted escape.

Probably not, Jill said. Probably was in the process of dying.

I have of late had too much of dying and death.

But witnessing the wasp's beauty reminds me of the fight of living and life.