July 21, 2005

Fireflies- A Poem

Iris Gardens of the Crescent Hotel Eureka Springs Arkansas

I have no photos of the fireflies here. I cant get them on camera, as my shuterspeed is too slow.... They are thick in the forested areas around here. Mak and Nani swat them off the window screens, and Woody and I, when out driving at night, grieve for every one that we mash with our car as we drive down the roads at night. For us they are little gems of the Ozarks, something beautiful and unexpected that we found here by surprise and delight....


"Fireflies"

By Karl Kirchwey


Those nights the fireflies love best,
windless and a little humid,
when they are current in the pasture,
busy in their greeny traffic,
signaling beneath the stars
("Like a nightclub's marquee," she says,
remembering Fifty-Second Street),
then I think pleasure is like this,
accomplished in a perfect silence
undeceived by loneliness.

And in the morning on the lawn,
seedpods of Eastern cottonwood
lie scattered open, white and brilliant,
as if true to some child's account
of what pleasure becomes with daylight.


beauty is where you find it