Between red rocks

I shared a moment with a firefly
with whom I felt I had a certain
affinity, being smaller than I’d like
and, I’m told, more gorgeous at night.

I admired her cold light which,
bouncing between red rocks
honeycombed with nooks,
flickered like a tiny tealight toiling
away to escape the clutches of a
curving and unforgiving stream.

She was a sight, I said, here at
cloudless twilight, in a place that
wanted for so little and gave with
such charity all its calm and light
to me, so that I was euphoric at first,
then jealous, since I was far from home
and would likely never be here again.
But she struggled, still, and struck
against the red rock hard, trying to
burrow inside its fissures. She hissed.

I said, You struggle, firefly, but why?
It seems you do not love this world
enough for all its beauty and wonderings
and for all the ways it makes you feel
at home, and for its silence and its
stars, its shelter and its sky like a
velvet scarf that wraps around you.

Between red rocks

And me, I have to leave this world
that has made you welcome, and you,
you do not love it enough.

And she, with all the assurance of
a creature exposed at its core by a
lantern-like abdomen, smiled and
said, Those in glass houses...