For this we go out dark nights, searching,
For the dimmest stars,
For signs of things unseen….
Rebecca Elson
June, and fireflies appear.
They emerge from their underground state
in the garden’s murky summer heat,
larvae coiled like embryos,
glowing, even then, in their earthen womb.
Do you imagine them, waiting
for the world to begin?
They surface. Hot yellow points
of light, flickering, then gone.
I watch and track
their calls to each other—
I’m here, this is mine,
let’s meet, make our young.
Guessing the spot
of their next drop or rise,
I think of the stars’ ancient grief
slowly falling to mark
the earth’s beginning,
a time when awe was new—
In childhood’s hot dense nights
fireflies were stars on earth.
Round rubber-toed sneakers squishing
on muddy earth, I captured them,
mason jar in hand. Top screwed off,
I made soft grassy beds at the bottom.
Tracing the on-off switch
of their bellies, I clamped
the lid on, flashing a light
to look inside and marvel
at their spindly legs
and hard blue-black wings,
Iwatched them crawl blade over blade,
their glow dimming.
I only wanted to watch them live.
Light does not always
beget light, want exacts its toll.
When do we see as kindred,
the night, the firefly, our hands?
In the garden’s murky heat,
in the dark shawl of night
do not let them whisper
We are gone. There are no young.
But rather
Love us. We can live.
—
Donna H. DiCello is a retired clinical psychologist and writer. She has had poems published with Blue Heron Review, Minerva Rising Press, and The Avocet, among others, and was a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee for poetry. Donna is currently working on a book about her retirement using poetry to move the narrative. She is currently enrolled in the New Directions in Writing program at the Washington Baltimore Center for Psychoanalysis.
