I am attracted to the dancing rhythm of alternating 7-beat lines with 5s. Sometimes I indulge that attraction. I started this one when I was 43, recollecting 20 years ago then.

I remember Feather River camping in July.
Creek and river meeting in the heat.
Privacy together. Love uncovered to the sky.
Manzanita, maple and mesquite.

The only thing unfortunate about those precious days
of sun and solitaire and sex and drugs,
was how at dawn and sunset – even through the midday blaze –
we had to share our paradise with bugs.

But if I took a sun-warmed seat along the river’s side,
upon a jutting rock that edged the beach,
the dragonfly patrolled the water with its sweeping glide
and swallowed every insect in its reach.

A stick of iridescence on a wing too fast to see
eliminated all that bothered me.