You share with us, good firefly

 

You share with us, good firefly,

Your light to read one haiku by,

Your roll-call shouts of green-gold light

That decorate the sultry night.

Emeralds lost, emeralds found,

You delve in dark where gems abound,

And none but the heart can measure

Your wealth in emerald treasure.

To think that you were fashioned too

Without us to imagine you,

Or ask of some insect at least

To bear some light of Eden’s east,

And so our nights were thus arrayed.

And should we say that we betrayed

Your luminary brotherhood

That holy night of childhood

We puzzled you inside a jar

And saw the beetle that you are?

We know you glow for procreation

Then darken to evade predation,

And still we are so grateful where

Your gentle plague claims our despair.

But if just once, just one word, love,

You formed the constellation of,

O lightning bugs! I think we’d all

Be blinded like the toppled Saul,

And never see the world the same,

If only once you spelled that name.

 Another sentimental dream

Whose fleeting limelight is your gleam—

And quick let’s add while starring there:

It’s not for arson that you flare;

You’d only dread to be the one

To spark and re-alight the sun;

For all your night’s green-letter days

It’s only darkness that you praise.

And may your embers always pour

Through summer evenings we explore

To seek some key of life we lost—

Forgotten, stolen, dropped or tossed:

Love unanswered, love departed,

Love that sends us lonesome-hearted

To search by moon and starry sky

And your green flares, good firefly.

You glow and help the heart to see

That hope is where we find our key.

It’s dark where love had fled our sight,

And so we search where there is light.