“Closer.  Look closer (…)
                I am a star, too.” 
                                
                              –        from Luciferous, 2015

The pale yellow sun dissipates like butter into cloudy biscuits
unnoticed—unseen—behind the house—til my mother’s solar lights
begin to ignite, one by one—her little love letters
to the hummingbirds (that haven’t come)—just like her words
come, one by one, between promises of oh, you’re writing,
I’ll be quiet until she isn’t
and speaks again.

                                   I remember where I was when I wrote
that first (published) PoMo piece, years ago:  I was
housesitting for my little sister, her huge half Beagle-half St. Bernard
sitting beside me, head leaned on my leg, watching
what I was watching—innumerable fireflies rising and falling
over several acres of uncut grass and weed.  The air was no doubt
filled with aphids, and the pulsar-flash of the insects fell like lightning
in their pursuit to fill themselves—fill their need for hunger and desire—
which is to say,
hunger. 
                                                       I was hoping to find love.  I was dying to be seen.

                Where have the fireflies of our youth flown?

                                                                                                                     So many articles
have asked, over the decade that has passed since that night.  And yet, here, now,
even in the depths I’ve roamed in recent months, they are
in flight.  Rising and falling amid my mother’s garden.  Rising
and falling over orchids, lilies, hydrangeas,
gladiolas, lilacs, hostas, peonies,
spireas, and astilbes.                     

                    I try to draw it together.  I attempt to make it all
                    Connect.  The fireflies, the sunset, the flowers.
                    This is the Ars Poetica, is it not?  Revealing
                    where spirit meets tangible world,
                    distilling meaning from the magic
                    from the slow meandering years
                    to see, to snap a photo of a moment
                    and its offspring thought.

Ten years ago, there was (I saw) longing in the lightning.
Tonight, I linger in the thorns of loss. 

But there is beauty.  There is so much beauty.

In the fireflies, the sunset, the flowers.
In the constant interruptions
of my mother
                            there will come a day—not long off—
                            when the lilt of her voice no longer
                            interrupts. 

                                                You’ll remember
                                                this too.

We struggle and we toil and we beg the muse
to give us reason and a means to create
something of permanent worth.
                                                              A poem.
                                                              A photograph.
                                                              A love.
                                                              A life.

Meaning doesn’t require so much work.
Poetry exists in both grief and doubt.

Just like that poem was about fireflies
                        and, inadvertently, the fallen.

Just like this one–about fading light in a beautiful night
                         but heavy with personal loss.

Though the hummingbirds may be fleeting
and the fireflies may be dying.

                                     Though she no longer
                                     reads your texts.

Meaning is ineffable.
Meaning is pervasive.

And a poet is only a poet
who breathes-in experience

and gives it back
in every exhale

as a gift.