I have been trying to liberate the firefly.
I have been trying to confirm my humanity.
I have been trying to make new friends
but they have been struck immobile by
my destructive tendencies. Nobody likes
a criminal, no less one that is female.
And yet there’s simply no time to be
both pious & provocative. At any given
time I’ll have cherry stains on my fingers.
At any given place I’ll be levitating above
the stolen artifacts of my victims—
birthday wishes, declarations of love,
that sort of thing. But I stay away from
their gardens. It’s so clearly arrogant
that you think you can codify nature,
that its feral randomness can be tamed
to occupy your perfect measured space.
Not in your backyard, you say. A piece
of advice: your rituals should be sung
in secret, not written down, & then
you can play with them yourself.
Any good agent of change will tell
you that. It’s a habit like anything else:
to clear out a room, to alienate, to tidy up
& throw out. You don’t want to feast on
old things. You don’t want the light lingering
around in a fist when it could be free.
Photo Credit: Mike Lewinski via Creative Commons
