A Collection of Poems: Fireflies, Arrival of Spring, End of the World

By Tom Lagasse

 

Fireflies

Mid-summer, mid-evening the blue-

black night shrouds the self to become

 

A hidden witness, like the backyard maple

and the forsythia bush, to the nocturnal 

 

Life emerging from its slumber.  Again, 

I wait expectantly for the fireflies to return.  

 

Once constant stars on a cloudless 

night, they danced to an unheard music

 

Their incandescence blinked their own 

luminous light show. How I long to be 

 

Part of the glow and again walk

through their fluid constellations

 

Of delight as though I am touring

a microcosm of the mystery.

 

Excessive night light has blinded 

the fireflies to see through darkness 

 

And humans’ ceaseless appetite for 

manicured lawns has poisoned their homes 

 

To near extinction.  Now, all I can do is wait

for us to become wild again, to again desire

 

The flickering field and connection over

the ubiquitous ones pulsing inside our homes.  

 

Tonight, I will search for a single glowing pulse, 

a beacon, to help find our way back to the stars.  

 

 


Arrival of Spring

Spring will soon arrive yet

will offer stark consolation

 

In a country whose people reside

with ice in their hearts and dare not

 

Remove their dark tinted sunglasses 

and be blinded by icy whiteness.

 

Fires rage in every direction

and no warmth can be found

 

The planet heats by degrees,

and we apply more sunscreen.

 

Soon all that will remain from 

the snow melt are puddles 

 

and memory, but tell that to 

the broken birch and maple limbs.  

 

Tell that to those who mourn 

the dead – who respond and point

 

to their hearts.  Not all wounds 

will heal.  The scars etched into

 

The body, into the land cannot 

be hidden by bunting or flags.

 

 


End of the World

Surviving heatstroke, he transforms 

Into a god of his own making.  

 

Blinded, he believes he is Tireseus.  

Burning he believes he is Prometheus.

 

In his Copernican world he yearns to be 

Both Sun and Oracle.  Curious acquaintances, 

 

like planets, orbit with the hope of love,

friendship, or insight but receive only fire.  

 

The climate heats.  Fertile ground becomes fallow.  

Parched land cannot feed insatiable hunger.