Fireflies
Fireflies
Your dad tells you he’s seen hardly any
This summer. A few, but nothing like
He used to when he was a boy.
You remember them too, how they’d light up
The pasture like paparazzi, turning
The old mare into a celebrity.
He blames it on all the spraying.
For the first time the grain farmers
Who own the valley used a drone
He watched float back and forth
Mourningly over the corn, trailing
A gown of poison. As he’s talking,
You’re still remembering summer nights,
Running barefoot in the yard towards where
One had appeared. When you got there,
It was gone. But it wasn’t gone, only gone
Dark in the darkening air. It resembled
A pair of eyelashes flying. Only after
You caught it did it glow. Then
You’d peer into the bellows of your hands
To see them fill with a ghoulish green light.
It was what you’d wanted. But you let it go.