Fireflies

At Blackwater

fireflies

are not even a dime a dozen-

they are free,

and each floats and turns

among the branches of the oaks

and the swamp azaleas

looking for another

as, who doesn't?

Oh, blessings

on the intimacy

inside fruition,

be it foxes

or the fireflies

or the dampness inside the petals

of a thousand flowers.

Though Eden is lost

its loveliness

remains in the heart

and the imagination;

he would take her

in a boat

over the dark water;

she would take him

to an island she knows

where the blue flag grows wild

and the grass is deep,

where the birds

perch together,

feather to feather,

on the bough.

And the fireflies,

blinking their little lights,

hurry toward one another.

And the world continues,

God willing.

I with you reader, likely of the Southland and Midwest of the Americas wonder where all the fireflies have gone. Once abundant in my youth, though the world continues, the evenings shine with less brilliance with these insects nearly gone and the stars blurred with light. I am told that we don't have the illuminating insects here because the city sprays for mosquitoes. I don't know how or why exactly for every species, I just know that Eden is lost.

Yes there is a deep sorrow in this, and there is also an affirmation of faith that gives me hope beyond the stark reality of the world we are losing. The faith comes from the ever possible emergence of beauty - that in the imagination of the earth's evolutionary processes and in our human heart and mind, we will never lose Eden. For we are Eden, and when the beauty around us shifts and degrades, we will remember and hopefully, the remnant will give rise to a greater world. Even if only ants and mosquitoes remain in the coming millennia, we, as them and the power and grace of the cosmos, continue on. Even as blown apart bits of matter, there once was a land known as earth and it birthed miracles of life. Continuance is not a necessity of love and beauty, only faith is.

Cormac McCarthy in "The Road" which tells of the ruined earth in an apocalyptic setting ends his book with these words of faith:

Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the fl. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculite patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not to be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.

What feeds your faith or takes it away?