Today was hot and humid, which meant the fireflies were out, in force, at dusk. One particularly frisky little bug hovered in front of the living room window, seemingly infatuated with the magnificant glow of the small light by the window. Zzz. It said. Zzz. Zzz. Callous light just glowed steadily, ignoring the little critter.
How sad, this lost moment
and the love that was not meant to be;
The little burningbug
who lusted after electricity.
I didn’t see my first firefly until I moved to a house on Grande Isle in Vermont several years ago. The place was surrounded by fields, high up on a hill overlooking the lake, the closest neighbor hid by a bank of trees.
During the summer, thunderstorms would roll through, magnificent expositions of lightening and rain. And at dusk, in the cooling moisture, bright lights would begin to appear. A shy glimmer here, a quite moment of luminosity there, until the field was aglow with the delicate white lights, dancing in and among the plants.
Was this was my most perfect moment in Vermont? Or would it be held by that winter day, when the sun fell coldly on pure white snow, brilliant blue sky overhead reflected in the ice on the lake. And across the unmarked white field in front of the house hopped a red fox.
Later that night, we threw the switch that lit the lights on a tall evergreen far out in the field. The tree lights reflected on the snow, like fireflies flying about in the cooling mist of a summer night.