Firefly widowers and warming apple cider 
with a porch light.

July leads the kind of death of a mother--
it takes till September for you to remember that
you can't wake her up in the morning for
chocolate chip pancakes and you won't feel
the coffee machine sputtering before you
wake up again. You become your own
hazelnut vanilla coffee to sip from
her arm of the sofa-- 
Watch a blank tv.
Hear the train whistles from the tracks
over the hill that always call louder
in the cold--
The black screen tells you that the fireflies 
have become widowers-- all of them sitting on porches
and waiting for the frost to click off
the lights still lit in the abdomens--
some of them carve their wives initials into
the apple crumb-cake dirt and train whistle 
songs that remind them of fourth of July
when we were all somehow ten-years-old.
I'll tell them I didn't know their wives
but that I'm sorry never notice fireflies until
they're already starting to die.
We don't see dead fireflies, do we? 
We see brittle grass and broken porch lamps
and an increase in stars--and when
I was ten I think there used to be more fireflies
but I might just have wasted my
sense of wonder on those summers when
catching a firefly was like reigning in a piece of a sun--
they quievered in my cupped hands like the coffee pot
full of hazelnut vanilla coffee-- Now tonight I warm
apple cider by a porch light and it's still
hot and soup-ladel summer but we all know that
autumn is already stuffing potato chip bags
with maple leaves to toss under our feet
in the morning-- ginger-snap through the field  
on twigs and the shells of fireflies
still glowing faintly in between the 
blades-- I'm warming apple cider with the porch light
and sharing it with the firefly widowers.
They share stories about how all of them challenged 
the fireworks on the fourth of July and
how they gorged themselves on trashcan watermelon 
that wasn't melancholy like gingersnaps dipped
in warm apple cider-- the last supper 
of the summer air rasping and coughing like
a coffee pot-- They ask me to shut off the porch light
They ask me if I'll have pancakes in the morning--
if I'd still make them alone for
the sound of a blank tv?
I tell them I won't-- that I'll probably
warm apple cider again and listen for train
whistles and wait on the porch
again for the Sugar Maples to strip for
me and shake their hips bare in the
swirls of their shredded dresses-- pieces 
of their sex in the August when
the fireflies first whispered about death
and realized that
summer is three months deep
and takes four years to dig ourselves out of.
And when she comes back I'll make
her chocolate chip pancakes and vanilla hazelnut
coffee and we'll sit on the porch 
lit by the sun and trashcan watermelon 
and firefly lovers still whistling 
from the night before.