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Once, boarding the train to New York City, The aisle crowded and all seats filled, I glimpsed An open space—more pushing, stuck in place— And then saw why: a man, face peeled away, Sewn back in haste, skin grafts that smeared like wax Spattered and frozen, one eye flesh-filled, smooth, One cold eye toward the window. Cramped, shoved hard, I, too, passed up the seat, the place, and fought on Through to the next car, and the next, but now I wonder why the fire that could have killed him Spared him, burns scarred over; if a life Is what he calls this space through which he moves, Dark space we dared not enter, and what fire Burns in him when he sees us move away.

In the dry summer field at nightfall, fireflies rise like sparks. Imagine the presence of ghosts flickering, the ghosts of young friends, your father nearest in the distance. This time they carry no sorrow, no remorse, their presence is so light. Childhood comes to you, memories of your street in lamplight, holding those last moments before bed, capturing lightning-bugs, with a blossom of the hand letting them go. Lightness returns, an airy motion over the ground you remember from Ring Around the Rosie. If you stay, the fireflies become fireflies again, not part of your stories, as unaware of you as sleep, being beautiful and quiet all around you.

The lights come on and stay on under the trees. Visibly a whole neighborhood inhabits the dusk, so punctual and in place it seems to deny dark its dominion. Nothing will go astray, the porch lamps promise. Sudden, as though a match failed to ignite at the foot of the garden, the first squibs trouble the eye. Impossible not to share that sportive, abortive, clumsy, where-are-we-now dalliance with night, such soothing relentlessness. What should we make of fireflies, their quick flare of promise and disappointment, their throwaway style? Our heads turn this way and that. We are loath to miss such jauntiness in nature. Those fugitive selves, winged and at random! Our flickery might-have-beens come up form the woods to haunt us! Our yet-to-be as tentative frolic! What do fireflies say? That loneliness made of light becomes at last convivial singleness? That any antic spark cruising the void might titillate creation? And whether they spend themselves, or go to ground, or drift with their lights out, they have left the gloom, for as long as our eyes take to absorb such absence, less than it seemed, as childless and deprived as Chaos and Old Night. But ruffled, too, as though it unearthed some memory of light from its long blackout, a hospitable core fit home for fireflies, brushed by fireflies' wings.

Here come real stars to fill the upper skies, And here on earth come emulating flies, That though they never equal stars in size, (And they were never really stars at heart) Achieve at times a very star-like start. Only, of course, they can't sustain the part.

It's almost May and yesterday I saw a firefly. You don't see them a lot in the city. Sometimes in the park in the near dark one comes out you'll hear a little kid shout Lightning bug! Firefly! It's almost May and yesterday I caught a firefly in my hand. First firefly I seen in a long, long time. Make a wish, Miss Edna said. Make a good one. Firefly wishes always come true.

I love you from the sharp tang of the fermentation; in the blissful pulp. Newborn insects, blue. In the unsullied juice, glazed and ductile. Cry that distills the light: through the fissures in fruit trees; under mossy water clinging to the shadows. The papillae, the grottos. In herbaceous dyes, instilled. From the flustered touch. Luster oozing, bittersweet: of feracious pleasures, of play splayed in pulses. Hinge (Wrapped in the night's aura, in violaceous clamor, refined, the boy, with the softened root of his tongue expectant, touches, with that smooth, unsustainable, lubricity—sensitive lily folding into the rocks if it senses the stigma, the ardor of light—the substance, the arris fine and vibrant—in its ecstatic petal, distended—[jewel pulsing half-open; teats], the acid juice bland [ice], the salt marsh, the delicate sap [Kabbalah], the nectar of the firefly.)

in memory of amy clampitt A single seedling, camp follower of arson...

The day my body caught fire the woodland darkened. The horizon was a sea of maids, rushing to piece me back into a girl. Out of the girl came yellow flowers, came stem & sepal. You never happened, they said. The meadow was a narration of lessness. Inside the corral, horses fell from the impact of lightning. They broke down. I heard gunshots in my sleep. I was a keeper of breath, of hay. I walked a field, collecting bones. You can build a house out of bones. You can stand at the doorway quarrelling with your legs to enter or run until you turn to ash.

Periyar Nature Preserve There is no crumbly frozen cake to thaw. Today, we are in the jungle. I mean mosquito. I mean tigers and elephants sludging their way to the lake for a drink and Don’t make sudden moves or snakes startled from an afternoon nap will greet you fang first. I think we are lost. Too hot for any cold confection to survive. Even my tube of sunblock is as warm as a baby’s bottle. You get to those places I can’t reach, those places I dared not even whisper before I walked down the aisle in white. You never worried if our families would clash, if they would clang like the clutch of pale monkeys clanging the thin branches of the treetrops, begging for our trail mix. You never worried about my relatives staring at your pale, muscled calves— things not usually seen outside of the bedroom. You wore hiking shorts anyway. And still, they lavished ladle-fuls of food on your plate. I think we are lost. My eyes are dark and wet as that wild deer that walked right past us, a little off the trail. I think we are lost, but for once I don't mind. Eventually you turn us back to a place not on any map, but I know I can trace it back with my finger if we ever need it again. We made it one year without a compass and we’re not about to start now.

That summer night Was hot Steaming like a crab Luscious under the shell Televisions gone bleary Blinked In front of men In undershirts drinking beer Wives upstairs took showers Caught A glimpse of their backs In hallway mirrors I sat in the dark Invisible On the backporch Drinking in the night And it tasted good So good Going down And somebody like me Blew night through an alto sax Blew and blew His cooling breath His hot cool breath on me— And I came alive Glowing In the dark Listening like a fool