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When Lightning Bugs Become the Stars
Tonight, the moon is crossing
the Yampa River, and the sky
and world are right. Stars plunge
themselves into the riverbank
and scrabble of gravel. There is always
more than one way to slurp the sap
of stars. Back then, as a child,
I would go out to catch fireflies
in the Indiana dusk, and when stars
appeared, I was certain the lightning
bugs had gone off, leaving me to light
the world. Now, when I hold the moon
in my throat, I know the cold snows
of the north and the long months
to get there. I know when the coyote
howls here in Livermore, that there is
a pack of wolves in Manitoba
trying to reach me. I know the fox
denning behind our house
has traveled from Japan, from inside
a book in which she was also a courtesan
magically transformed by a kiss.
That my bed sheets and their snug flannel
contain a weather vane pouring the wind
from the north, from a boreal forest
in which I am lost both and found.
The weathercock turns and turns
in ways that show me how easy it is
to lose direction. How I need to keep
looking down into the fertile ground—
where the glowworm descends into the dirt—
to know where my light is
and how to reach it.
And to learn, from below, just how to fly.
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