Kindred Spirits

Yesterday, despairing at the pond's stillness, I stood a long time, watching buzzards wheel in a gray sky, their silhouettes wheeling on silver water, until some smaller movement caught my eye.

A water strider, I thought, and looked more closely. To my surprise, I found a stink bug struggling with something else. The something else disappeared, and the stink bug struggled to right itself, circling and flailing in the water on its back.

I couldn't do nothing, so I walked to the edge of the water, stuck out my walking stick, slid it under the bug, lifted it, and offered it a bush stem. The stink bug sort of shook and then proceeded to climb up and around the leaves till it settled in the little bit of sun there was.

People don't like stink bugs, and in many places they're reproducing at an alarming rate, even invading people's houses. But I didn't think about what the bug was; I only knew that I couldn't just stand by and watch it drown.

When I got home and looked at the fuzzy pictures (shot as they were from some distance), I realized the aggressor had been a yellow jacket. How they landed in the water is beyond me, since neither is native to that element, especially at some five feet or so beyond the shore. But there they were, and there I just happened to be.

Sometimes -- like this time -- I believe myself odd. But then at others, I read about another odd person, as I did today in Julie Zickefoose's blog post, titled "The Squeaking Sphinx." How happy I am to know that there are kindred spirits out there in the world.

Become a moth, caterpillar, and thank your lucky stars Zickefoose came along. Be a stinker, if you must, shield bug, and thank your lucky stars I came along. 

We're the ones who "fool around with wild things." We "try to help them[;] and how they delight" us!

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.

A Visitor at My Door

A single yellow jacket died and nose-dived into a pucker of my deck doormat.

All summer long, hundreds (if not thousands) of yellow jackets nested in holes in the ground and wood planks and under rocks all along Lake Cheston's shore. At the dam, I knew every nesting site and simply avoided stepping into or stabbing my walking pole into one. The yellow jackets didn't bother me because I respected their space and they respected mine.

I confess to a peculiar summer pleasure: I enjoyed standing just above one or more of their nests in morning. When the air warmed and sun shone, they burst out like shooting stars, rat-a-tat, so fast and so many they made a yellow stream pouring out of darkness into light.

I found this fellow in mid-afternoon. By morning, it was gone, perhaps providing someone's meal or snack overnight. I missed him when I opened the door: he reminded me of so many happy days at the lake, and of the summer now -- like him -- gone.

The Rule of Three

1.
Golden slice of sun,
burnished tulip poplar leaf,
yellow jacket. 
Serendipity.












2.
Moonrise Kingdom, 
poem masquerading as film,
Peter Pan without treacle.
Masterpiece.

3.
Walking stick
at the front door
waiting to welcome me home.
Lucky charm.