Lampyris Noctiluca

Lampyris Noctiluca

At the foot of the stairs you flickered past, the fox
with its tail on fire, leading me deeper into the wood:

firefly, wingless, the movement a trick of the night
conjured in a blink, a projection of light onto light.

*

We saw glow-worms in the navy-blue of an August
evening, blobs of green phosphorescence in the
twiggy crackle of the hedge, drips of luminous paint.

The boys were fascinated, prodding with sticks but
when neither had moved for some hours we knew they
were not in love, but dying.

*

Lightning bug, you have told me the stories again
and again. Camp councillor shedding light on the
lives of the privileged, your flashes of brilliance a
candle in a brightly illuminated room

and in the end, no electricity, no fire, not even a glow,
under the microscope lampyris noctiluca, a beetle.