I love fireflies more than most people do, I think, because I didn't see one till I was in my 20s. (We didn't have them in California.) So when Adam asked if I saw the poem in The New Yorker about fireflies, I hurried to the coffee table, where we keep an archive of recent issues. Lo and behold, there was a poem about fireflies! I didn't like it though, and I read it to him with skepticism. It appears the magazine has run two firefly poems lately. Here's the other one:
Fireflies
By Linda Pastan
here come
the fireflies
with their staccato
lights
their tiny headlamps
blinking
in silence
through the tall grass
like constellations
cut loose
from the night
sky
(see how desire
transforms
the plainest
of us)
or flashes of insight
that flare
for a moment
then flicker out
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