Firefly Light

Incandescent fireflies
illuminate the dark,
lay their eggs, then die.
They pack a lot into one short year.

Here in NYC
my interaction with greenery is limited
to walks in the park with my dog.
I feel like a firefly living
in this concrete box of an apartment,
ricocheting between the walls,
high above the earth,
disconnected from the neighboring flora and fauna.

I yearn for nature’s beauty:
The bottom of the Grand Canyon
on the Colorado River.
A majestic elm framing a big screen porch
upstate on the Hudson, swimming from one
side of the river to the other.

The sirens, protests, motorcycles without mufflers,
all the great, grand noises of NYC
attack my ears.

I crave wind through trees,
bird song, music of rushing water,
the hush of new fallen snow.

Mother Earth, give me an outpost
filled with many creatures.
Rather than NYC’s piercing skyscrapers
and 8 million bustling souls.
Let me live in a landscape kind to fireflies,
where they flicker and shine brightly
before they die.

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