They aren’t dragonflies despite a double set of wings and tapered tail and even if they are the same size
viewed from the ground nor are they dragons breathing fire although you would have been forgiven
for thinking so if you’d been sheltering in a trench in Verdun or the Somme as they flew low and bombs fell
from an open cockpit like explosive teardrops with tailfins and there was no place for you
to run. When I see them flying over Owls Head, the little town I live in, puttering gently beneath
a blue sky, humming to themselves the one note they know, moving so slowly you think they’re tied
to a puppeteer’s strings since no plane can stay aloft with so little forward thrust, it makes sense
for them to have double decker wings and two pockets of high pressure holding them up like mystical
fingers of air and come to think of it they are a bit like angels, especially when the sun catches the halo
of their prop and you are dazzled by this messenger like so many others the heavens have sent our way.