JUST FIVE MINUTES

A brief but deep delight it is, to 'steal a moment' (as though one's time is another's property), sit quietly and watch - enter insect time - as a male dragonfly, after a ziggy cruise back and forth on glassine wings, perches at last atop the tip of the tallest limb on the plum tree, a prominence carefully chosen as affording the best location for displaying to all the flitting dragonladies - for the few days allotted - bright red masculinity in all its charm, while a few branches below, a large garden spider has been busy all her life weaving a broad web of such geometric complexity as to astound mathematicians and evolutionaries, and of chemical complexity so simple as to be far beyond our most advanced chemical reach, and all without an advanced degree, a cutting-edge lab or a vast production plant.

Meanwhile a tamamushi, peacock of the insect world, buzzes lazily by, so splendidly winged as to be in no hurry to light anywhere, a beetle of refractive iridescence way beyond Warhol's wildest dreams, and not at all commercial, simply having emerged that way from a cocoon somewhere in the wood into living beauty surpassing any jewel, winging slowly past on the quiet evening air...

Just 5 minutes of your time...

Photo via What's That Bug