FIREFLIES AND SPIDERSILK: ROBIN REID Next Poem:....................................................................................................................................... Back to Poetry Index

June nights in northeast Texas bring fireflies

bright flashes of light I thought hallucinations

at first morning walks after such nights

are warm and sticky not with water

with flying tendrils of spidersilk

which brush my face then catch and light

these strands are too fine to see in the light

do not exist except to touch just as fireflies

are too fast to be seen their lights like spidersilk

are afterthoughts dreams hallucinations

flashing in the dark behind my eyes drowning in water

that does not touch ground during Texas nights

spiders hang webs on the corners of our house nights

when I go outside to turn the water off & light

my way with a flashlight to see if snakes after water

have drawn close to the house to drink I wonder are fireflies

prey for spiders do they eat at night hallucinations

of glowing lights wrapped tight in spidersilk

follow me indoors these spiders are large and yellow spidersilk

webs two feet across easily survive predators during nights

when other small creatures hide from Death hallucinations

have no place in this world between dark & light

inside and out window panes fragile barriers yet fireflies

bridge the gap mix elements of fire and air water

and earth not so easily brought together in the heat of Texas, water

blue-green, shrinking, grasshoppers eating grass then eaten in spidersilk

I cannot miss grasshoppers not in their millions do not know if fireflies

are at risk but know that the bluegray nights

even with all the stars over Texas would lose some of their light

if fireflies slipped from fragile life into myth or into hallucinations

the shy small lights tempt me to dream of dragons technically hallucinations

or life that lives so deep in canyons weighted with sea water

that heat is the only food whose flesh is imbued with light

all alien forms of life part of songs spun like spidersilk

to keep the dark away on those frightening nights

on a June evening before the full moon rises, Texas fireflies

can bring such hallucinations carried on images light as spidersilk

slipping through my fingers like water as I dream away the nights

then wake in the red light of morning the sun drowning out fireflies

Robin Anne Reid teaches creative writing and critical theory in the Department of Literature and Languages at Texas A&M-Commerce. She moved to Texas in 1993. Her scholarship includes work on feminist theory and speculative fiction, fanstudies, and Tolkien. She began writing sestinas when she assigned an exercise in a creative writing class some years ago and found the form addictive.

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