In Praise of Fireflies

after Les Murray’s “Broad Bean Sermon”

Or of the light that shimmers through them,
those myriads of flash-filled sparks.
Of smallness that interrupts the dark,

and of the largeness of the moon, whose beams
bring forward beginnings-without-mourning,
carry what’s subsided, drape the ever-shifting

in their brightness, leave room for galloping dreams
and night parades. The way that daylight glints
on a lover’s glasses, how tide ripples lead to a pearl

lost in the muck, and thin lines of sun travel through clouds,
through flaps of window shades, into my living room,
into my grandmother’s living room in New York City,

across wood floors and floral sofa-beds, coruscating
along thin blankets and pale white walls. Those spotlights
on cherry blossoms, and petals of minuscule orange

flowers amid towering palms. In praise of what sheds itself,
the ever-present shine that lends constancy to the ground
glistening beneath our ever-darkening feet.

*Christine Poreba is a recent graduate of the MFA Program at the University of Florida. Currently a newly married resident of Tallahassee, FL, she continues to write while teaching English as a Second Language to adults. Honors include 2nd place in the 2004 Atlantic Monthly Student Writing Contest and a 1st Place Hackney Literary Award from Southern Birmingham College.