Tipton Poetry Journal
Were it not for the firefly John K. Kruschke Summer's hot and summer's humid: Summer's trifling, endless, stupid. Summer's games waste on all night, insects swarm under the lights, mindless phototropic creatures, like the people in the bleachers, mesmerized by play-by-play, eating dogs while they decay. Dogs bark man at crack of dawn, roaring mowers bite the lawn, deaf'ning blowers blast the dust, wound with gas exhaust disgust. August: Annexed 8 B.C., when Ceasar named a month "for Me!" because his uncle Julius already seized July from us. July the Fourth: The flag's still there! The fireworks, bursting in air, remind us all of war's delights: Our children's fate is firefights. But wait... retreat. The firefly — in quiet night, in starlit sky, with summer's Milky Way aglow — still winks of wonders yet to know.
John K. Kruschke’s quatrains are published in a book with doggies on its cover and advanced statistical methods inside. He is a retired professor who has lived in Bloomington, Indiana, for 35 years.
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