25 P. J. Nights for the sweetest lass on the return of her dogs (no thanks to her husband) “Here come real stars to fill the upper skies, And here on earth come emulating flies.” ~Robert Frost
n
o one dares write poems about fireflies anymore because fireflies have been well-written yet their tiny glimmers make the heart glad and I like to think these little points of light might shine for you, too and burn off that throb of solitude make the ancient emptiness a vestigial coat of arms today the lost pups came home and whimpered ‗round your bed after an unexpected outing in the thicket, yet you‘d not the nerve to write poems about liquid brown eyes and unconditional love because that has been done, too, but we allow that each deep look of love and musty river smell is not all about dogs but us and the day — lass, you deserve licks on the nose and grunts of contentment, dreams of cowboys with wide-brimmed hats playing guitar to soften a hard bed of clay— we might envy the stars and be left with sobs, we might draw maps of our hoped-for kingdoms charcoaling out the only roads to cities of sea roses and oklahoma dust in every poem, we might howl like babies yet we hope we are not pretentious, surrounded as we are by made things that take us away from the heart of the woods, the hollows we wish for our beds, wise denizens of the underbrush, and newborn things pushing through the detritus of fallen leaves this is a dangerous storm you weather, but I‘ve the umbrella and you‘ve the pretty house, and we‘ll make it a mere inconvenience— we‘ll write our clichés and turn them into topiaries of chicory blue, a pavilion of poppies bursting forth in a wave of joy