Hmmm, how delicate the dance between humans and nature’s tiniest creatures.
The art of capturing photographs of insects can be quite challenging. Butterflies tend to be skittish and take flight no matter how surreptitiously I approach them. Some species of dragonflies are compulsive flyers and decline to perch to be photographed. Many insects make their home down in the grass or weeds defying my attempt to get an unobstructed view of them.
I spend an inordinate amount of time chasing that one elusive moment when all the conditions converge for a good photograph. Such was the case for the half inch long Speckled Sharpshooter at the head of this post. It was perched on the stem of a plant affording me only a side view. I desperately wanted to see the speckled back which gives it its name.
We engaged in a kind of ritual dance. Each time I moved to the left or the right for a better view, it mirrored my movements and shuffled to the other side of the stem. This went on for several minutes until I surrendered to its ability to evade me. It occurs to me now that our interaction was a living metaphor for the fragile relationship between humans and nature’s creatures.
Dancing with a Sharpshooter – a random act of metaphor to remind me that I must be an observer, not a disturber, of the insects that fascinate me so.
~ Now Available Online from Amazon, Chapters Indigo or Barnes & Noble: Hunting Muskie, Rites of Passage – Stories by Michael Robert Dyet
~ Michael Robert Dyet is also the author of Until the Deep Water Stills – An Internet-enhanced Novel (now out of print) which was a double winner in the Reader Views Literary Awards 2009. Visit Michael’s website at www.mdyetmetaphor.com .
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Tags: metaphor · Michae Robert Dyet · Nature · Speckled SharpshooterNo Comments