The Fireflies

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by Laura Parker Roerden

Last night
the stars
made our
hayfield
into a bed.

Twinkling
and turning
from light
to dark,

and back
again
to
light

in the dark
tangle
of knotted
weeds

and swords
of grass,

sometimes in
synchrony,

but often
as chaos.

The perfect
flat disk
of a full moon

spilled

shadow

everywhere,

but
still
was

not enough

light
for
this
moment,

this

time.

The stars
took
pity and
in their
infinite
wisdom

soaked
the land
with seeking
pulses,

lights

reaching
out to find
others
with which
to join

—as bee
finds flower;

light singing
as land
no doubt
remembering

once
upon a time
of freedom,

but bearing
scars
too long
unacknowledged.

Something
beckoned me
closer

to listen
as I’ve

now
and again

have
noticed

truth
reveals itself

most
deeply
in the
most

disquieting
of ways,

as when
up

becomes
down.

Each
pull of discomfort

is a sundial
pointed
true north

telling
us

the time,
to heal,

is now long
past midnight.

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Laura Parker Roerden is the founding director of Ocean Matters and the former managing editor of Educators for Social Responsibility and New Designs for Youth Development. She serves on the board of Earth, Ltd. and is a member of the Pleiades Network of Women in Sustainability. She lives on her fifth generation family farm in MA.

 

Published by Laura Parker Roerden

Laura Parker Roerden shares a love of what nature can teach us. Writer, public speaker and supportor of youth to boldly know and save the wilds. She is the founding director of Ocean Matters and a fourth generation farmer and thinks today’s young people are reason to be hopeful about the many environmental problems facing us. She lives on a family farm in Massachusetts with her husband, three boys, and an assortment of fruit trees and farm animals.

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