I don't feel like talking tonight.

Came home and wandered upstairs where Jerry was putting up a Dead Man, he said.

What?

He nailed lengths of two-by-four together and made a tall T-shaped post. It now stands slim and long with arms out to support a tarp keeping the exposed upstairs room dry. With hard work, aggravation, and a new hammer, Jerry is carefully reassembling the house into a better space.

Why a Dead Man, I ask.

When you're on a job site, this does a job, but it's not a real man. They call it a Dead Man, he said.

Huh, Dead Men are so simple.

So, tonight a Dead Man holds the blue tarp up against a sky about to unload days of blinding rain too intense for the earth to drink in.

I could use a few Dead Men. One to keep me awake and alert when I doze at my desk at work at the computer at a meeting and on my feet.

I need a Dead Man to drive me home some days when I want to nap. I need a Dead Man to talk to, because my tone of voice as I address my dogs, my support group, scares them. The rock in the woods where I sit and make my small pleas to the dusk is certainly tired of my scratching voice. Glaciers heaved this stone to the surface, gouging it with a story and a history, and I'll drive it back.

Today is blunt and ugly against me, and I'll try again tomorrow for a better welcome.

Overheard: Some people enter this world poorly equipped to handle it.

Yup.

Overheard: It's not human anymore. It's an outsider now.

The movie upstairs is scary. A demonic kind of scary that makes me afraid like I am small and mom wants me to get something from the disagreeably damp, dark stone basement.

Two weeks ago as I dropped a heap of laundry on the floor I heard something batting against the skylight. Rhythmically it collided and retreated from the glass. A bird? I stood below the window and looked. Nothing moving, but I saw a dragonfly perched on the edge of wooden molding. Had to be him.

Days later I saw his body face up on the wooden shelf. His legs were bent the way all things fold in death. The body turns in on itself. Life eases out like whispers. Free and roaming they leave behind their old clothes.

I had forgotten about the dragon fly, and I realized I could have spared him the spider's sticky binding. Four wings made more by thought than substance. One is torn. He struggled. I leave him where he sits on the counter, afraid to touch something that did its best to elude me. Huge eyes like black and gold oblong stones smoothed by water.

Several days later I hear something batting against the skylight...

Another dragonfly, and I am going to save this one. Trying to reach him with a broom for a few minutes, I finally leave for work.

Back to that heap of laundry. Letting the socks and crumpled shorts fall from my grip I hear something hitting the recessed lights and low ceiling overhead and I scream. Dragonfly….Grabbing a pint glass with a scene of Paris on the side and an overdue AT & T bill, I trap him. We walk outside. Goodbye dragonfly.

Is it their time of year? Is something driving them inside?

Reading about them brings me no answers, but some funny information: Female dragonflies lay eggs in or near water. The eggs then hatch into nymphs. Most of a dragonfly's life is spent in the nymph form, beneath the water's surface, using extendable jaws to catch prey.

They breathe through gills in their rectum.

They can rapidly propel themselves by suddenly expelling water through the anus.

I have to tell Jerry!

Lily perks up at my excitement.

Since their rectums did not propel them into the house, I stand there holding this question -- whywhywhywhywhy -- but it's as slick as an egg yolk.

Putting on my shoes that morning Jerry and I talked about aliens. I will believe that sooner than I accept religion -- the stuff of imagination and hope. The stuff of dreams and effort.

Aliens might be everywhere. They could be in the dust, Jerry said. They could be insects.

Agreeing with him I say, yeah, not all life has to be our size.

We may not even know about them, he said.

I have heard him say before that mosquitos, for example, could be the aliens, not a science fiction monster.

One more thing about the dragonfly: some nymphs even hunt on land, an aptitude which could easily have been more common in ancient times when terrestrial predators were clumsier.

Now for the rough stuff about dragonflies. Depending on the country, a dragonfly could be called the devil's darning needle, ear cutter, eye poker, eye snatcher, or are often associated with snakes, such as the adder's servant. Says the Internet: The Southern United States term "snake doctor" refers to a folk belief that dragonflies follow snakes around and stitch them back together if they are injured.

Also found online: A seasonal symbol in Japan, the dragonfly is associated with late summer and early autumn. More generally, in Japan dragonflies are symbols of courage, strength, and happiness, and they often appear in art and literature, especially haiku.

Dragonflies visit.

Two with gold eyes come to me.

Autumn on their wings.

Well, it's not perfect, but it's mine.

Maybe I'll try a haiku for Lily one day.

My thoughts are sharp and barbed about work, drivers, people in check-out lines, strangers in a gas station, and my cats.

Upstairs like distant applause of many tiny hands rain slaps against a blue tarp ruffled by wind and water, but clinging tight where nails bind it to rotten plywood.

Off came the roof the other day and there, eaten by weather mold insects water and mildew was splintering plywood that sagged. Eek.

I get home and look upstairs at Jerry where he works to rebuild a room he peeled open like a can and tossed on the ground. Under the cover of a temporary cris-crossing of two-by-fours he is dry and happy. Rain taps overhead.

You taking the dogs out, he asks.

Yup.

In the rain.

Yup. Lily was jumping yelping nipping spinning since I walked in.

I don't want to ponder coincidences today.

Instead I take out a picture I shot in Maine.

Sunshine sends its pastel shades to push away night's bruised hues. Dew sparkles. The forest soaks in honey.

Lemon-tinted stains slip across tree limbs and pine bows, drip down trunks and chase shadows puddled near stones in the ground.

Sunlight rises like steam, and campers' dawn fidgeting adds to the white noise of living things.

My thoughts are sharp and barbed about work, drivers, people in check-out lines, strangers in a gas station, and my cats.

Upstairs like distant applause of many tiny hands rain slaps against a blue tarp ruffled by wind and water, but clinging tight where nails bind it to rotten plywood.

Off came the roof the other day and there, eaten by weather mold insects water and mildew was splintering plywood that sagged. Eek.

I get home and look upstairs at Jerry where he works to rebuild a room he peeled open like a can and tossed on the ground. Under the cover of a temporary cris-crossing of two-by-fours he is dry and happy. Rain taps overhead.

You taking the dogs out, he asks.

Yup.

In the rain.

Yup. Lily was jumping yelping nipping spinning since I walked in.

I don't want to ponder coincidences today.

Instead I take out a picture I shot in Maine.

Sunshine sends its pastel shades to push away night's bruised hues. Dew sparkles. The forest soaks in honey.

Lemon-tinted stains slip across tree limbs and pine bows, drip down trunks and chase shadows puddled near stones in the ground.

Sunlight rises like steam, and campers' dawn fidgeting adds to the white noise of living things.

Looking through the glass I watch him bend. Sunlight paints his shoulders as he stabs a beach umbrella into the dense, wet sand. The umbrella's scalloped edge flaps and brushes the horizon, its cloth fringes tickling far away tree tops. I crouch lower and sky slips between slightly folded canvas, his carved upper arms trap clouds and swatches of baby blue with him under the shade that he props on the beach. A straight-edged profile. Slender nose. Lower lip pinched to a perfect angle. Tossing my gaze through the lens I follow the contours.

Just a man with hands wrapped around an umbrella post, he leans down. I dip below him, shooting his profile against the sky. A flash.

Photography is about shapes. It is light. Distances. Patience. It is either frustration or surprise, but rarely just right.

Jerry tells me, I am sure these photographers take hundreds of shots, and you're just seeing their best.

I am crumbs on the couch, flipping through a photo mag like it's a blender.

What can I say? Hmmmmm.

Back on the beach. Dropping the umbrella he sits beside his girlfriend. Toes in the water she splashes him and I stop the droplets. My shutter opens long enough to trap shards of light slipping through beads of water.

Then a beach blanket. She turns to press a hand on his shoulder and leans toward him.

On their feet she laughs, hair flying. In his arms he dips her shoulders toward the water and her feet reach the sky.

Later I tell Jerry, they were great. They were playful and happy and perfect.

With a smirk: like you and me, he asks.

He is tough and dirty now with sawdust and grime coating him, making creases in his skin. A few days later, standing in the same place in the kitchen, he shuffles toward me. Droopy eyes and skin soaked with the warmth of sleep, I hug him and press my cheek into the smooth curve beneath his chin.

Photography is a bad dream.

Early pictures of Lily still scare me. Within her shiny eyes I see a vibrance trapped inside diminishing flesh sucked tight to her bones. Where else would that spark of life go? Fur without luster. No longer loping, she pulls heavy feet along behind her or just stops to hang her head. How long did she have left in that photo?

I took few pictures of Lily when she first came to me. No reason to remember days when death was close enough to touch every time I ran a light hand down Lily's knobby spine.

I am singing this song that goes LilyHersheyBanditOzzyLilyHersheyBanditOzzyLilyHersheyBanditOzzy.

Most days that's a great tune, but right now I want them all to just shut the hell up…

Standing alone in the bar with a glass of Merlot, just me and my hopes and the dark. I heard James McMurtry's words shoot from the speakers like well aimed darts. I sipped my wine, swallowed a hint of envy, and began writing down his abrupt, poetic, and sad bursts of words. Little drops of ink sinking in.

Little things. Old photographs, beer, bitterness, standing at a window alone, the flavor of regret like bile clinging to our teeth, are the heavy heavy things that sink us.

We are all a danger to ourselves. The mistakes we make are wasted as we cover our ears and look for something nice, shiny, and distracting. We grasp the bright flash and disregard the lessons.

I glanced past the stacked and clean drinking glasses, over rumpled bar rags, to peer nearly 18 years into the distance where I find an old boyfriend's handwriting in my hands. I remember holding a James McMurtry tape with a red and white strip along the top where faded ink letters ran together.