Outside, early fall, 2:30 p.m., 2018

Two frogs sit in and on the edge of a koi pond in suburban Philadelphia.

Me in the backyard, earlier today. Sitting with a magazine on the back terrace, the artificial fish pond ten feet in front of me. I've known I've had two frogs for a week now, but this is the first time I can see them both. It's warm for this time of year. I'm wearing a short-sleeved shirt. The sun is in and out of the clouds, hitting my right shoulder, the one I broke on this terrace in May, from behind. The shoulder still hurts, but the warmth feels good. The pump in the pond is going, the little waterfall it powers making the sound of a small brook. One frog is on a floating blue hyacinth, the other on one of the stones that make a little wall around the pond. They are facing each other and remain motionless. 
A dragonfly comes. A big one; about two-and-a-half inches long. It swoops back and forth over the pond and surrounding vegetation, catching and eating small flying insects as it goes. Its flight is perfect; it's hard to believe that somewhere in its tiny bug brain there aren't two neurons feeling some sort of pride in its abilities. I track it as it darts around the pond. 
Under the hyacinths, which are starting to die, the five fish living in the pond swim near the bottom, looking for food, quarreling with one another. 
This scene, to the creatures involved, is much like one from three hundred million years ago. The frogs and fish would have had some minor differences and the dragonfly might have had a two-foot wingspan (there isn't enough oxygen in the air now to support such large insects), but other than that, they did the same thing. Sat in the sun, waiting for prey, nibbling at algae, flying after insects. The sky was as blue, the sun as warm, the days, the years, about as long. 
I think about this when I look up from my magazine. For minutes at a time, I forget about the cancer that took my right leg seven months ago and will probably kill me. I forget about the crutches at my side, the upcoming treatments for another kind of cancer (prostate) and the general aches and decay that come with being sixty. I think instead about this day on this steady, spinning ball of water and dirt that we're damaging but that will recover a few million years after we're gone. 
The sun, our first god, has about five billion years left in it. Time enough for Earth to heal, for new life forms to evolve, for amphibians, fish and insects to eat and breed.

Bugs and the Loser

Since he was in his early teens, the Complete and Total Loser has had encounters with preying mantises that have had, if he'd ever believed in nonsense, almost mystical aspects. In odd settings (a city in Japan) and at odd times (the low ones) they've landed on his shoulder and looked at him in wary regard. At times, the Loser has thought it's because he'd heard as a child that they are great pest killers and should never be crushed or poisoned and they know this about him.
At age 13, the Loser found one of their egg sacs (they look like spit) and kept it till they hatched, sending many tiny, perfectly formed mantises out into the world.

Here's looking at you, human.

Good luck, Papilio troilus

Because his prostate cancer will kill him before he's sixty, the Complete and Total Loser won't live to be the old man he wanted to be: A kindly gent, clean, walks with a cane, spends time at his pubic library and takes pictures of birds and insects as a hobby. 
So he does a little of that now, in his backyard. Today he photographed the Spicebush Swallowtail version of him. The Loser's leg is short and gimpy, and so is this butterfly's right wing. 
If the Loser could have spoken to it, he'd have said, "Eat what you wish and as much as you can, but not so you can mate; no female of your species will have you. Build your stores to fly on your own. Fly beyond your normal range, to Mexico or Central America. Live, dammit man! Live!"

A Perfect State

They are one and the same, finally. The Complete and Total Loser's libido and his mental desire are dead even for the first time, though he has a vague recollection of writing something similar to that before. It's probably one of those things that comes and goes.

A shy katydid peers around a post at a train station.

The Loser is shy with women (he knows he repulses them) so not wanting to approach any removes conflict. He is at peace. True, he has the knee jerk responses to the bare flesh of summer (so many thighs ...), but that's ephemeral. 

Onward, summer!