After a week’s worth of buildup by the weather service, yesterday’s “rains” amounted to two momentary episodes, each consisting of only a smattering of sprinkles. Today’s forecast remains much like yesterday’s, and while the air is hot, heavy, and humid, experience teaches us to regard the rain as a hope, not a promise.
Still, we are blessed: There is water in the pond, still more flowing down the main ditch, and the dragonflies have returned. The waters are mating grounds now, and later in the season, there will be many more of their kind, should we be able to keep it from going dry again.
In this part of the world, dragonflies are messengers and symbols of abundance, both in love and in terms of general prosperity. There are many reasons for a worldview that assigns them such meanings, not least of which is rooted in their proximity to water. In a desert environment, water is the one priceless thing, that which exists beyond crass commercial, colonial, and capitalistic valuations, no matter that such forces do their best to hoard and waste it even as they attach outrageous price tags to it. But water is medicine, breath, life itself, that which allows us the space and capacity for love.
It’s not just the water, though. Dragonflies have a deep and abiding relationship with the plant spirits, one that begins at conception — and this is perhaps one of the ways in which they have become associated with notions of romantic love. If you’ve ever had the privilege of seeing dragonflies or damselflies in their mating dance, you’ll know that one attaches itself to a blade of grass or marsh stalk to facilitate the process. Once underway, they bend, ultimately finding each other, often, once their flexible bodies have united in the outlined shape of a heart.
One of the subsidiary roles given to them by Nature itself is that of accidental pollinator. We tend to focus on the bees and the butterflies, and on the tiny hummingbirds, but dragonflies are an integral part of the process of creating life beyond their own bodies, too. These small dancing spirits of water and light are also skilled at finding flowers, and thus at facilitating their reproduction even if doing so is not the point of their visit. More to the point, perhaps, is that they help ensure the health and survival of the blossoms by preying upon insects that would otherwise destroy them, but the fact remains that they, too, are able to carry pollen from plant to plant.
In these days of drought and climate change, our wildflowers will take all the help they can get.
Today’s featured work is a shining example of these delicate dancing spirits — all gentle colors and graceful curves shimmering in the soft dawn light. From its description in the Earrings Gallery here on the site:
A Dance For the Dawn Earrings
The warmer winds bring Dragonfly, here to perform a dance for the dawn, wings ashimmer in the light. Wings captures the soft glow of a summer sunrise with these earrings embodying the small summer spirit of flight. Each dragonfly is formed of a length of slender but solid sterling silver triangle wire, meticulously hand-stamped down the length of its curving spine to create a body as reflective as that of its living counterpart, and as agile and motion-filled, too. The wings are cut freehand and milled in a lined pattern that evokes both summer rains and rays of light. At the top, each small spirit’s head is formed of a cabochon of beautifully gentle peach moonstone, their color as fragile as the first rays of dawn light. Each earring dances from sterling silver wires via a single silver jump ring. Earrings hang 2.5″ long (excluding wires) by 1.75″ across at the widest point; cabochons are 3/16″ across (dimensions approximate).
Sterling silver; peach moonstone
$425 + shipping, handling, and insurance
And they would have been dancing in this morning’s dawn light. At this season in this place, that light is a gentle thing, all soft peach skies glowing gold and edged with silver. Beneath a warming sunrise, when the waters are at last measured in feet, not inches, their surface rippled and shimmering like diamonds in the light? The dragonflies will by now have been at work for hours.
Part of that work is to serve as messengers, and in these days of deadly environmental upheaval, it takes very little that’s mystical to guess what that message is. But part of their work is much more down to earth and waters. It is their job to reproduce, to ensure their own survival (and by association, ours as well). But it is also their job, and their joy, to spend the day in finding flowers.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2019; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
