Empire of the Fireflies by Lauren Scharhag

Spring now:

the great pulse and push,

bulbs thrusting upwards

at their earthen ceilings,

stalks raw and cut-looking,

gasping at the sky.

Buds burst forth,

painfully wet and green

as exposed nerve endings,

still clenching secrets,

like modesty,

of petal and leaf.

Thawed pond, where koi

shy away, in the throes

of hibernation hangover,

from the hand that

scatters the feed pellets.

Songbirds screech,

all insistence,

quickening tempo,

soaring rush, all haste

toward their mate and

blind, pink children

quivering in a nest

of shell and reeds,

needy maws.

Want begets want.

Wanderlust surges

like sap, overflowing,

seeping from bark,

a sticky tide that sweeps

thoughts away

from the mundane

and onto the lilac paths,

airborne, where dog-star nights

and trenchant heat await.

Sloe-colored dusk. Fireflies.

Like eyelids, like empires,

they fall and rise

and fall again.

Lauren Scharhag is the author of eleven books, including West Side Girl & Other Poems and Requiem for a Robot Dog (Cajun Mutt Press). Her work has appeared in over 100 literary venues around the world. She is the recipient of the Door is a Jar Award and the Gerard Manley Hopkins Award for poetry, as well as a fellowship from Rockhurst University for fiction. She lives in Kansas City, MO. To learn more about her work, visit: www.laurenscharhag.blogspot.com.