About Fireflies
by Susan Flynn
Thinking of you this sultry summer night, I see fireflies. When I was six, I darted from my
Midwestern front porch to capture them in a mason jar, poking holes in the tin lid with my father’s can opener. I didn’t understand they might be dead by morning. All I cared about was the light. Wanting to chase it, capture it.
I’ve learned more since then. Fireflies produce a cold light, a luminescence without heat, to attract a mate, or prey. You did both, with flash and sparkle. Brilliant mind, dazzling smile, fiery touch – with you, I was six again, all chase and capture. Only caring about the light, not thinking about what might be dead by morning.
The first time I saw Carvaggio’s painting, “Conversion on the Way to Damascus,” I, like St.
Paul, was thrown from my horse, struck dumb by the light. I was standing in front of the painting in Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome. I’ve learned more since then, about the life of the body, the nature of light, and Carvaggio – how he prepared his canvases with a pigment from the powder of dried firefly wings. Like me, all he cared about was the light.
Colors She Will Someday Name
J.L. Cooper
No better story than a fine aging cloak,
secrets safe in languid finger strokes;
gifts to a crimson edge – a haunting
sameness there. I rarely see you touch
the other colors, stitched with equal care.
It’s ruinous for me to ask – only you
can tell your wishes; hard won, your craft.
What color did you give a vicious fight?
Or leaving home? Or reading, in lesser
hours, a letter sent from your first lover,
describing what it was to kiss you?
He poured himself into his letter,
then died in Vietnam. That was the green
velvet part – that much you told –
patched between pieces of blue cotton
and magenta silk; all the pieces given
by your grandmother. Call it inheritance.
Grandma said the sacred waiting treasures
would speak, and find their rightful places.
I must be a fraying edge to you.
I don’t know what it is to sew.
I offer my cupped hands to hold
your spilling words and feel your
melted armor when you tell about
waves of black, deeper reds,
or the white moon you never touch.
