Fireflies
Today Patrick and I took the dogs for a walk as the sun was setting. As we passed by the magnolia trees, the fireflies came out. I wish there was a way to take a picture of it: The stately old magnolias, six of them, with their canopy of dark leaves screening out the last of the fading light, their heavy white blossoms nodding their heads, nearly asleep after the hot southern summer day, their trunks wound in the choking embrace of kudzu, and then, down near the ground, where the fading light had just given way to gloom, fireflies. At first, they seem like a trick of my eyes or imagination. But I start looking for them, and suddenly I realize the dim chapel of the trees is filled with them. They hang in the air for a moment, not like stars, but like something friendlier, closer, moving and alive. They aspire to nothing higher than my shoulder, than my eyes. There is no way to capture them in a picture and send it, though. No way to share it, except to be there.