"Fireflies"

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