Heather Neidlinger
You count roly polies in the yard, fireflies
dangling before your face like string lights, like porch
lights, like the thousands of whispers that race through trees
while Fleetwood Mac plays on the radio
and everything smells like grapes, like irises,
like younger years mixed with dreams and honey.
Your mother sits beside you, says, honey,
cultivate your purpose, collect them, a jar of fireflies.
Set it on your bedside table, on the edge of the porch.
Count stars til you’re dizzy, climb trees
to look for higher ground, reach for radio
signals through the branches, stretch like budding irises.
Your mother says use your legs, keep moving, and the irises
remind you of her silver hair, her pale skin, of honey
that drips from comb to cup. You are her firefly,
her reaching hand, and while you sit on the porch
she whispers that you are the clinging leaf to her tree.
You are the song she sent, trembling, through the radio.
She cranks a knob with slender fingers, and on the radio
Journey crackles through, so you dance in her irises,
dance fast at first, then glide stickyslow like honey,
and she laughs at the hoard of fireflies
that make a crown around your head. From the porch
Rush sings about oaks, says there’s trouble with the trees.
Your mother tells you she feels like a tree,
roots grounded and no chance to run, but if the radio
is on and the song is just right, she sends tremors to the irises
at her feet, feels the bees hum in her ear while they fill it with honey.
Says just because she can’t move doesn’t mean the fireflies
can’t tell her about the world, every angle and dip of the porch.
She carries you back to the porch,
still small enough to be held, not quite the lofty tree
you will become, just a mothers’ song through the radio.
You are a sweetscent in the air, the bulbs of irises
she tenderly planted while dreaming of honey
and baby socks and a life fully lived, hopes like drifting fireflies.
When she puts you to bed, she sets a jar of fireflies
by your head, cranks that radio on the porch,
and you dream of the tree you might be, of growing irises, of honey.
