Trances of lighting bugs, fire flies, and unlit paper lanterns.

Lightning bugs have always taken 
me into a trance-- something whimsical
but eerie and distant and uncontrollable--
they form a crown of tea lights on my head
and tell me not to tip too much
to the right or to the left-- tell
me that they raised their daughter better--
tell me I have to walk like a princess in
the barefoot grass of bee carcasses 
and hollow bodies of raptured fireworks.
Fire flies like to braid my hair 
like stale soft-pretzels or Challah
bread in the soaked cracker-jack evening 
when we eat raw green beans on the porch.
I have soy bean shell knees and sun-boiled 
peaches in my cheeks. 
They trained me to be the heiress of corn husks
and veiled street-lamp moons--
told me to kiss boys on the 
double yellow lines to make
a sacrifice to the notions of July
and the sick syrup of humid love--
They hem the sky line 
with the garden hose. I have always
worn their thorny cowl of mosquito 
bites and dry grass-- waiting for 
the fire flies to sprawl out 
on the back yard like candles 
floated on ginko leaves
or the feet of Jesus outside a boat
of apostles who might as well
have been barn owls or bats--
ate fruit and honey like a last supper
and told me that God spread
himself thin on nights in July
in the delicate abdomens of
the lightning bugs-- we hold
him in jars like holy water.
There's a reason we never lit lanterns
my dear-- I wasn't yours to fly a lantern for--
we were raptured fireworks-- a brief
glimpse of man trying to break
the night like the scattered glow
of God in the bellies of bugs--
and we were never fire flies
And I'm not sorry because someone 
had to get kissed on the double yellow
lines that July-- save the lanterns
and never forget that lightning bugs
see more than street lamps.