Lampyridae

Behind my house, wetlands are filled with dead and blowdown trees. Peepers signal spring and skunk cabbage carpets the muck, so thick and succulent I think I can eat it in the meatiest caesar salad.

We wonder if we should fill in our pocket swamp, to make it productive. So we can sit on chairs in it. So we can grow tomatoes and eggplants in summer. So we can extend ourselves over our land.

But we are lazy and don’t understand how to get fill dirt and we just walk to the edge and look  in and talk.

The first blinks of light happen in early summer. It is never a sure thing, like the weather is not a sure thing anymore. More specific : the first blinks of light start at dusk.

Hesitant sparks tremor so faint and sparse we dot our heads trying to see them. To pin them down.

Then more. And more. From ground to canopy. As the darkness materializes, the light punctures the scrim and the galaxy comes to our woods.

There are so many; a bumper crop a neighbor says. Now, instead of trying to find the lights, our eyes relax open and drink them in. Thousands of sequins move in the light night breeze. Their erratic patterns call to each other, signaling food or sex or danger.

The Eiffel Tower puts on a similar display every night just before it goes dark. Many evenings I sat on the roof of the Foyer des Etudiantes, unwilling to go to bed until I saw the show and knew the day was really over.

Now years later, I do the same. Stand at the edge, looking and waiting for the spectacle to signal my retreat back to myself.

__________

Amy Bowers is a MFA candidate at Bennington Writing Seminars. Raised in the swamps of central Florida, she recently relocated to the Northeast but still writes about alligators, dark rides, and cultural borders in the south.