Observations in nature

From the past week:

* A gleaming black dragonfly, wings about three inches across and body as long, appearing like an obsidian jewel carved by nature and set floating to wherever the wind takes it.

* A tree covered with stumps of severed limbs, like a stout but dim boxer bearing the scars of too many fights. I wondered who could do such a thing, torture another living organism so brutally only for their own aesthetic pleasure. The tree's remaining limbs were twisted around the trunk, appearing almost to strangle the tree as if in some vain attempt to protect itself from its attackers.

* A field by a creek dotted with crinkled white objects that I first took for so many discarded facial tissues but upon closer examination discovered, to my delight, to be fallen flowers from trees overhead. I cradled one and held it up gently, feeling its soft folds against my palm and studying the pattern of tiny brown dots on the interior of the flower. The end was a clean break; they had fallen as intended, to be scattered by the wind and spread the seeds of new trees across the earth, even though most had barely escaped the shadow of their parent. I was reminded of a wedding, or perhaps a funeral; but then I realized that those were merely artificial recreations designed to evoke this very event. They were the simulacra; I was experiencing the reality.