Summer Twilight

Shortly before sundown, we discovered several dragonflies flitting about in a loose swarm around the house. They had large rectangular wings that seemed to transmit semaphore as they dived and soared in wild circles. At most there must have been fifty or sixty of them. These were big bugs - the kind that sound like pebbles when they hit your windshield at top speed on the highway.
"They must be mating," said Rebecca.
"What? Now? Summer's winding down... seems a little late," I responded.
" Laying eggs for next summer..."
"Ah," I answered, now suddenly considering the frantic despair of propagating the species.
"They look like helicopters," said our boy, instantly conjuring Apocalypse Now images set to Wagner in the mild evening light.
I brought out a camera to try a picture, but there was nothing really to fasten an image to - the dragonflies were hardly posing at their graceful speeds. I wondered if the shorter days of the season was triggering an awareness towards even shorter days to come, as if they were demonstrating all of their vitality against some programmed ending.

Within minutes of the initial buzz of the streetlamps, the swarm had suddenly drifted somewhere else without us noticing where.