Pastoral #4
These lights
as ricks of maple boarded latticed doused by raw whiskey
burnt to charcoal fall
as heat folded in a lack of vital air & a rush of water to cool an ignited fire
as a body gathered in a Mason jar as a paean to a childhood
I don’t remember well
surrounded by darkness as wings surrounded by elytra
& I pause as my dog retracts on his leash & later he sits
his body neutered against the desire of the field
& I watch as a cold light of chemicals luminesces from the twilight of insect
tails
& I remember the nights of their conception
children I have seldom seen a daughter conceived in the stressed heart
of her mother
the first night we returned to our bed & a son conceived for the need
of the daughter
who would be an only child as her father so her mother worried
for the child
cradled alone
so our bodies lit stacked crosswise on top of each other
in the gaslight of exhaustion & our intoxication
corresponds to the reaction of luciferase’s substrate luciferin (LH2)
w| ATPMg21
generating inorganic pyrophosphate & an intermediate luciferyl-adenylate
(LH2-AMP)
second to oxidation & decarboxylation of LH2-AMP to oxyluciferin
light emitter producing CO2 AMP & photons of yellow-green light
(550 – 570 nm) in dark reaction LH2-AMP oxidized to dehydroluciferyl-adenylate (L-AMP) luciferase also shows acyl-coenzyme A synthetase
activity which leads to the formation of dehydroluciferyl-coenzyme
A (L-CoA) luciferyl-coenzyme A (LH2- CoA) & fatty acyl-CoAs
& luciferase catalyzes the synthesis of dinucleoside polyphosphates
from nucleosides w| at least a 30-phosphate chain plus an intact
terminal pyrophosphate moiety I am
lesser of the two parts of my daughter & son & a name to rhyme
on special events
cruel as lights born for God & apprentices of our waning spring days
when crowds of fireflies or lightening bugs gather in grasses & on a hillside
in Pennsylvania
I stand at the end of my leash
wait for blessings of scarcity the arrival of my mourning riche & meek
comforts of inheritance I spent on knowledge & years of rent I paid
for righteousness
& years of want for this lightness as winged beetles glow
steady & flash
as a fear or sature
& glowworms I slept in the sepals of a Nightcap
as you laid beneath fronds of Cinnamon fern born & feed on nectar
burrow under bark
& hibernate
& pupate
into a glow so bright
my heart slows
from a hunger for pyrones & coumarin.
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