Fireflies

by Armand Garnet Ruffo

Never enough love, or too much of the wrong kind.
Pitiful things we were in the tall grass running
and stumbling near the stone bridge. Wawatasi,
my grandmother’s name, becoming in an act of naming
rising from the earth, an act of acceptance and healing.

Not witness, supplicant, aspirant, participant. Not that,
the way the beads of light unexpectedly flitted above us,
around us, and finally through us. To this day I have no
explanation, no muddled speculation, for what happened
that evening in Oklahoma, and if there is one,
it is beyond me. For a moment, wearing everything
that was lost and had to be let go.