Fireflies

A memory I want to preserve before it fades.

The Word to Word poetry reading on Friday, July 14 went off very well.The structure of the reading is unusual: three poets blindly send four pieces of poetry each to each other, and then endeavor to order them in a way that makes sense. The idea is that the poets will be "in conversation" with each other through their poetry. The problem was that we are three very different poets, and our poems touched upon very different topics. After weeks of pondering this, I noticed that many of the poems mentioned or could be placed in a time of day: the hours before sunrise, midday, the afternoon, dusk. That suggested an order that gave a nice flow to the poems, and gave the final poems a synergistic punch. The four that I chose were "Night, April 21, 2020" (set at 4:00 in the morning), "dancer" (which can be found here), "Ora Pro Nobis," and "Cardinal."

When the reading was over I made my way back to the car. I had had nothing to eat but a large stack of French Toast at midday, and now, nearing on 8:30 PM, I was hungry. I stopped at Burger King, the Burger King where my mom and I would sometimes stop to grab a quick lunch after one of her appointments. I got my usual two Whopper Juniors (two for $5) and splurged on some fries. I noticed a skinny gray-and-white cat in the parking lot, picking at a scrap of food. I tore off a chunk of one Whopper Junior and psspss'd to the cat. It watched me with curiosity until I tossed the meat in its general direction, at which point it retreated to the forested area behind the Burger King. Maybe it came back out to grab it before anything else did. Maybe.

I stopped at a supermarket on the way home, fifteen minutes before it closed. (The supermarket and its parking lot were a setting for a previous story involving a cat.) I dashed in to buy a horrible list of groceries: one small package of half pork-half beef to make meatballs (I was really looking for ground beef, but they were all out), two bags of potato chips (Middleswarth Weekenders, once 14 oz., now just 9 oz.), one container of ice cream (once a standard half gallon size, then 1.5 quarts, now 1.44 quarts.) I made it to the self-checkouts just as the store closed.

I came home and packed up the remains of my late supper  and my groceries, locked the car, and proceeded up the hill to my back door. 

As I climbed the hill I was greeted with a light show: dozens of fireflies, some airborne, some on the ground, all flashing their HEY BABY WANNA HAVE SEX? lights at each other. I chose my steps carefully, not wanting to tread upon any of the luciferous insects. I wished them well in their reproductive endeavors as I walked up the hill. May they be fruitful and multiply. 

Lord knows we need more of their kind to light up our summer nights.