Lightning Bug

I carried it to the edge of the cement walk.
It deserved me, I thought,

for how tirelessly I’d chased,
for the way I cared about its inner light.
A last look through the keyhole

of my cupped palms
and I set it down, then
stomped flat, smearing long with my toe

so the neon green spatter and jagged streak
glowed, brighter than before, as though
a spirit glad to have finally escaped its body.

With a stick, I drew a crooked star.
A diamond. And like a sickly dusk,
its ink faded, slow at first, then all at once.
I went giddy, innocent as a god.
Night’s oncoming chill

collected along my collar. I had no idea yet,
bounding back out
across the sighing, blue lawn for another,
no idea the suffering it would really take
in a dark world to shine.

Copyright © 2024 by Colin Pope. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on April 15, 2024, by the Academy of American Poets. 

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“This poem came to me the summer after I moved to Chicago in 2023. I’d been worrying about my soul for a while, particularly worrying why I felt so powerless and numbed and disconnected from the world. But when I saw this hatch of fireflies in a park one evening, an intense, almost sheering memory of childhood doubled me over like a sudden spirit possession. I could go back to the start of empathy, I realized. I could just begin today, that day, caring about the smallest beautiful thing and then working my way up.”
—Colin Pope