Lightning Bug

Sept 1 2015

She called them lightning bugs.

But they were the same fireflies,

drifting on the still night air

making cold chemical light.

Flashing on-and-off

like tapping-out code.

But tonight, they stayed lit.

Perhaps an immature stage,

young bugs

who have yet to learn

the secrets of semaphore.

So in the darkness, tiny points of light

swirled and twirled in ribbons and wreaths,

coasting on air like fairy dust

tossed from giddy hands.

It could have been magic,

all that motion

so uncannily quiet.

Meteorites burn brightest

before they die;

flaring into white-hot stars,

then falling to earth

as smoking embers.

We burn bright, then fade,

hoping for a gentle end

eyes at rest.

But brilliance begins

these lightning lives

brief as they are.

As if they had just invented light

and were drunk on their audacity.

As if fearlessly proclaiming

I am here, and now.

All I could do was stand

in quiet wonder

and delightedly watch.

Wait for the thunder

that never comes.

I flipped the radio on, and was listening to an interview (Tapestry, on CBC) in that hypnagogic state between sleep and wakefulness. Someone with a delightful southern accent made a passing reference to what she called "lightning bugs", and described this brief stage of life. Since I call them fireflies, and since I'd never heard of or seen such a thing, this stuck. In fact, I got right out of bed and wrote this poem. Not even pausing for coffee! (Or perhaps I have seen it, but they're mixed in with all the flashers.) Anyway, I imagined how it would feel and look to see all the fireflies synchronized; steady, instead of blinking. I apologize for the horribly clichéd "fairy dust". I may even have used it before, in the 1 or 2 firefly poems I vaguely remember. But it's just too perfect to let go, cliché or not.