David J Bauman

I bet you were thinking I wasn’t going to make it. Well, it’s still and hour and a half before midnight, so here is day five of 2012’s National Poetry Month project, 30 days, 30 readings. This time I thought I’d read for you one of my own. I hope you like it.

The images were picked up from a search not long ago for creative commons pictures of lightning bugs, or fire flies. Unfortunately I didn’t seem to save the references, so I will try to find those for you later. Deadlines, you know. The birch trees I found tonight on this blog.

Fire Flies

It was July, you were
nearly eight years old.
I was almost ten.
We stayed out late again
to watch the stars and fireflies
rise above your father’s farm.

I was Keeper of the Jar
as we ran through tall grass
and warm sweet summer air,
the scent of unseen lilacs
by the path. I sneezed

and dropped the jar.
Like a glass of falling stars
it rolled off down the hill,
and we chased after,
laughing, loosing breath
and sight in the undergrowth.

We tumbled into a stand
of birch trees at the bottom,
slim bent columns
mirroring moonlight.
A wish of wind brushed
branches overhead between
the stars. Enchanted
we stood silent a long while–

at last recalled the jar,
fumbled in the grass until you
spotted it behind a rock,
and bent to pick it up.

Was it the wet warmth
of your hand or the sight
of it, blood, black in the night?
Was it the stain of firefly
luminescence on the grass,
on your shoes and hands,
or the panic on my breath
that made you gasp?

I led you, hand
over tennis shoe
back up the steep path,
chunks of dirt
lodged in our fingernails.
What would our mothers say?

I think we cried,
but never spoke of that.
A bath, a cookie or two,
the sting of peroxide,
and the sour scent
of something blood-red
from a bottle, applied
in drops that stained
and stuck to skin
and memory.

The slow wings
of your bedroom curtains,
like the branches of birch
gave glimpses of the stars,
shining softly white.

The night-light smeared
a green-yellow glow that night
across the carpet and the hall,
and into everything.

© 2012 by David J. Bauman