Where do Fireflies Go?

a poem

I didn’t grow up around fireflies,
but I saw them once in late springtime
in Arkansas in black night sky.
Thought they were stars, doubted my eyes
when they danced in front of moonlit pines.

I saw them again on a summer's eve
in Vermont's long dusk, they moved through trees.
We talked of nets but let them be.
A childlike delight to see.
But that’s not what firefly means to me.

I think of a poet that I never met.
That I don’t know but can’t forget.
She wrote of fear, she wrote of hope
in poetry and daily notes.
She wrote when flashes in the sky
were not the lights of fireflies.

Bombs dropped.
Missiles roared.
She wrote the terror.
Wrote it raw.

I, not much more than a stranger,
saw her light, it signaled danger.
Signaled healing, signaled hurt.
She shone her light upon her words.
Writing to the depths of her
To find the love we all deserve.

I read her, helpless, bleeding heart.
Tapped the like to do my part
A futile try to say “I’m here”
and then one day
she disappeared.

Where oh where do fireflies go
to find a place that’s safe?
Without the burden to burn bright.
To recharge luciferase?

Where oh where do fireflies go
after the dark of night?
Do they find peaceful fields to play?

You know,
I think they might.

---

For Firefly Poetry, written from Labyrinthia Mythweaver’s prompt.

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