Consider the Bermuda fireworm,
a tiny marine invertebrate
that Christopher Columbus described
in 1492 as the flame of a small candle
alternately raised and lowered
against black water. Females, glowing
cerulean stars, circle near the surface
until males shoot up like tiny comets
from the mucus-tube homes
where they sleep most of the year
in anonymous benthic seabeds.
In mating season you can see
their electric coils in the waves.
Then the explosion, like fireworks,
when they deposit their gametes.
In preparation, all four of the male’s eyes
swell to twice their usual size.
The better to see you with, my dear.
Consider their complex internal clock:
fireworms mate in swarms exactly
57 minutes past sunset on the third evening
after a full moon in summer.
The females circle and pulse
like a bioluminescent ruffle.
Timing so exact, such striking regularity.
Wouldn’t it be lovely to know to the minute
that your expectations will be met?
This poem first appeared in TAB: The Journal of Poetry & Poetics (2022).
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Kim Roberts will release two new books in 2025: Q&A for the End of the World, a collaboration with Michael Gushue (WordTech Editions), her seventh book of poems; and Buried Stories: Walking Tours of Washington, DC-Area Cemeteries (Rivanna Books), her second guidebook. She has edited two anthologies of poems by Washington, DC authors, and co-curates DC Pride Poem-a-Day each June. http://www.kimroberts.org
