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Fireflies may disappear, so NY scientists are trying to count how many are left. —The Gothamist, August 22, 2023 |
They don’t light the lawn as they used to.
They don’t light up my brain.
As a kid I’d cup my hands into a lantern
and catch a dozen or more at a time,
they were so tame they glowed through my fingers,
lit my hands and then the jar I filled with them,
the dotted love songs of bugs—
then I’d set them free to speckle the summer grass.
Remember on the mountain how fireflies rose
high as the trees, spread a yellow Milky Way—
and the meadow we named Fireflyworks Hill
where fireflies at dusk outnumbered wildflowers.
Remember when they arrived each year to kindle
our brains, they’d set our neurons firing,
rising like wishes through the summer doldrums.
This year as each year their numbers dwindle.
I see one or two flittering solitary,
no one to answer,
to answer to,
