Posts Tagged ‘Firefly’

F

Firefly

One Ordinary Night
With Fireflies

The long lingering light of midsummer
Encouraged croquet
Among other things.
In the Grange Hall, farmers
Built like plow horses
Talked of the crops,
Predicting the harvest,
On the lawn their helpmates
Domestically apt,
Talked of couples
Predicting betrothals.

The lawn lights, lit when full dark fell,
Did nothing to dispel a new-moon night
Or to dim the glowworm’s faerie fire
A schoolmarm knew, (who better?),
That a lovelorn ladybug lay in wait
For whatever mate her lure would fetch.
Did she take the first offer
For fear there’d be no other?

As a schoolmarm it fell to me
To keep the young from going too far
In collecting bionic flashlights
(And of releasing bugs from jars later
Secretly, to avoid the smiles
Of those plain practical people)
It was different when my Beau was around
But I was just as pleased when he wasn’t.

He was no Prince Charming
But then I was no sleek brunette
My white dress went with auburn hair and freckles
But it didn’t have the panache of scarlet satin.
In real life Cinder Ella settles for Cinder Sam
Or at least I was about to
In farming communities then
Even children knew the facts of life
Enchantment was a thing of the mind
Or of the moment
Like finding that Prince Charming existed
And his stay in your world be brief.

When the ingathering of youngsters signaled
The end of the evening was near
I slipped off for my quiet communion
With the unreality of the fireflies
But a flash of scarlet satin
In the arms of Cinder Sam
Was far too real for enchantment.
In the dark, was all too clear.

My  pride prevented my speaking
And I turned, with my last jar a-glow
Lighting my way to nowhere
Till, my lamp found another
You make me remember my mother
The mate to my lantern said
She held you must send them home
If you wanted to harvest enchantment
For many a year to come

We picked out a likely bower
For our luminous ladies in waiting
So they could continue their courting
In the dark of the night with the rest
Then we walked hand-in-hand to the Grangehall
Charming Prince Charming and I
And I knew that this year the harvest
Was going to be of the best.