“The fireflies are out.”
They float and turn like some burning
ember drifting from a fire, catching on the leaves and in the air
before fading away almost as quickly.
Something new for me, a west-coaster.
We have frogs, we have slugs, and we have mosquitos. But fireflies?
No, nothing so quaint, so dainty, so memorable as those horny little
beetles anxious to get a piece before they pass along into the soil
they spent so much time cradled in.
I sit outside, the pale, sickly
blue-yellow sky fading into a dusty indigo flecked with stars as I
look farther and higher up. Trees form near-silhouettes on the border
of my vision around me, surrounding me with a quiet arena of summer
evenings.
They're pretty slow-moving, these
fireflies. They nearly lumber about in the air, seemingly unconcerned
by birds, bats or the easily distracted house cat. Just embers,
drifting off to sleep, flicking off and on from the corners of your
vision and skipping out of sight when you look at them, like when you
rub your eyes too hard with your fists.
Power cables stretch across the
backyard, and the bugs glint into a nearby lawn, behind the bushes
and out of my line o fision.
Except one. Or two. They always come
back. Just to remind you that they're still there. That they're still
horny, still looking for a mate, and still drifting slowly away from
that fire, and ever back towards the soil...
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