Photo by grafixart grafixart_photo on Unsplash
Where Have All the Fireflies Gone?
1
As a small child
I caught fireflies in the summer
because that was natural
for kids my age.
I’d use them as nature’s night light,
marveling at their bioluminescence,
wondering why they seemed
dimmer from my mason jar,
saddened and bewildered
by their slow death
and refusal to eat the grass
I placed in the jar for them.
To this day,
I still have no idea
if fireflies eat grass or not.
Never bothered to do the research.
2
“Hey man.
You play the hand you were dealt.”
That was my boiler-plate response
to anyone who asked about
the state of my first marriage.
It was a flippant, self-mocking
humor-of-the-remanded
simultaneously answering
nothing and everything.
Don’t know why I took
such a resigned stance
on being unhappy, lonely,
and with the wrong person.
Didn’t even try to hide
my dismissive shrug
from inside my mason jar.
I often thought that
if I reshuffled the deck,
I’d someday find the right person,
and that would fix everything.
Simply a matter of finding
the right grass to add, right?
3
Outside right now,
there is a bird singing his little heart out
at the cloud-obscured sunset.
I’m unfamiliar with the tone and cadence,
but it rings of a desolation and isolation
I haven’t heard in a long time.
Its song goes unanswered.
The ebullience of a neighbor’s deck party
partially drowns him out.
Their unnatural laughter
reminds me of a henhouse
agitated into commotion
by an invading fox.
Its cacophony
cancels-out the bird’s efforts.
He soon falls silent,
leaving only the sounds
of the fox-stirred coop,
its revelry soon extinguished by
a spontaneous late spring shower.
Nature always wins.
Now that I’m thinking about it,
I can’t recall the last time I saw a firefly.
I wonder why that is?
***
