Fireflies, for Edward Healton, by Carol Muske

We walked together up that country road.

It was dark. Vermont. Another season.

Then, looking up, we saw the sky explode

with fireflies. Thousands, in one frisson

of cold light, scattered in the trees, ablink

in odd synchrony. That urgency,

that lightning pulse, would make us stop, think

in our own lives. The emergency

that brought us here. The city, separation

and the pain between us. Your hands that heal

can’t make us whole again; this nation

of lovestruck bugs can’t change that. Still, we feel

the world briefly luminous, the old spark

of nature’s love. Around us now, the dark.

From “An Octave Above Thunder: New and Selected Poems” by Carol Muske (Penguin Poets: 204 pp., $14.95) Copyright 1997 Reprinted by permission.