FIREFLIES
Evenings when the children
are fast asleep and day begins
its shading to dusk,
from the shelter of our
screened porch we watch
their brief
transformations: small orbs
blinking like unintelligible signals
above the groundcover
then vanishing, only
to appear somewhere else:
beneath, say, the arms
of the ornamental pear
or over by the broken gate
no one can enter,
their cold light
strange proclamations of love
or hunger, faint sparks
pricking the darkness
filled with its tense
promise of rain, invisible clouds
holding it in.
Who really knows
another, what each
is capable of
if the moment is ripe?
When day comes and we
can no longer see them
they are there still,
unaccounted for
in the outer all-encompassing light.
