A summer child, I was born
silent. Contemplative of the firefly, which I knew
I would [as we all],­­ sooner or later, become. Aware of the awful
of jars, the fright of cupped hands and cheesecloths, taut.
The inexorable luminarias of us. Flightless––
A negligible loss, the mother will say when the son questions
the small cruelty of his capture. All there will be left
to do is die, diminished, by a window and this too will be exquisite,
won’t it? It is in the wanting
that we will come to see three-hundred-and-twenty-seven
brightnesses. Eight in the lemon tree
alone.