It’s a dark and cloudy November night, and you have to close your eyes to remember fireflies. Tonight. Tonight I’m missing the on/off drifting flicker of July’s fireflies. It was months ago, I know, but they were here in July, I’m so very grateful, they were here in July, flying and flitting here and there among us, and above us, like a bit of magic, among friends. Like a folk song with a picking strum. Like the notes my friend Laura taught me to play so many years ago. Like the sound of my favorite John Prine song. Like my sister’s laugh.
Ahh, I remember the year fireflies sparkled like magic amongst the highest leaves of the tallest oak trees, mixed with the glitter of stars in a clear night sky on the 4th of July.
Cold nights have their charm, they do, but I miss fireflies. Yet I wonder if I really miss the flying and flickering here and there fireflies, or just the dreamy whimsy of a summer evening.
I’ve counted several times, and yes, November 1963 was sixty years ago. Those were days when the world experienced sadness in a terrible collective way. It was a time when kids had nuclear drills in school, when people were supposed to have fall-out shelters in their backyards. (We didn’t. We had a cellar with a metal cabinet, where we stored canned vegetables.) It was a year past the Cuban Missile Crisis, when my family huddled around this same TV set and listened to President Kennedy tell us about submarines and nuclear weapons. And we were a few scarce weeks away from hearing “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and discovering The Beatles.
Just ahead. Around the bend. September leftovers give up the spirit one night, as quick as one crisp, frosty overnight, and in a breath, a collective surrender to the inevitable passage of time. Jackets, blankets, and cozy nights. Green gives way to seasoned leaves and the October transition bends to its given destination.
Spring planting was something I did for my parents in their latter years, something I enjoyed immensely. They had great soil, great dark soil, and it was a pleasure to garden with such good dirt. As reality goes, weeds grew happily in that soil too, but after weeding, the rest was easy. You could handily hollow out the required small crater and drop a tiny plant into the soft dark soil, press the dirt granules to surround the plant, and that was the extent of the process.
I knew what my mom liked, and I knew what I liked, and there’s this thing about planting. You have to buy plants with something like a vague game plan, but other than that, you dig a hole and insert the plant, and that’s 95% of flower gardening. Dig a hole, insert a plant, cover it over with some dirt, and give it a watering. It’s called the process. The process is initiated. The precious process.
My parents could handle watering once in a while, and I could fertilize when I visited, and that’s all it takes in good dirt. It was a process I loved. I came in May and started the process. When I came back in July, things were well on their way. A little fertilizer, a little water. And my mom had pretty flowers growing at the corner of her yard. She was pleased. It’s called the process.
My dad wasn’t as accepting or agreeable. He still had a few tomato plants growing along the side of their house that came from nothing more than re-seeding. Again…the process. He’d nurtured those plants for years and years, and the plants did their part.
I think of plants in a personal way, and I imagine the plants and seeds respond with something like gratitude. An acknowledgement and appreciation of everyone’s role, and a recognition of the relationship that exists with plants and the earth and humans. My dad didn’t really accept that someone other than him would plant his tomatoes for him. From his chair in the living room, he said something like, if I can’t do this, and if I can’t do that, what’s the point? Nevertheless, we planted the tomatoes, and without much in the way of staking or other attention, they produced more tomatoes than the ones I tend to on a regular basis. Good dirt. And the process. It just works.
I remember standing under the stars. Under all the stars that peak in and fade out of a dark endless sky canopy.
I stood at the end of a walkway, far enough to leave the incandescence of civilization behind. It was the end of a day. The end of a night. The end of a week. And it was past the glow of manmade lights. Out on the edge of darkness. The language of awareness came in singular musical notes…about the edge of darkness.
We have to move past the glare of people and civilization, it seems, and stand at the edge of darkness to really see the stars and the heavens. And then it’s a gift to us. Out on the edge of darkness.
“Out on the edge of darkness”, from Cat Stevens’ Peace Train (1971).
The distant crackle of thunder on a dark starless night and the gentle patter of raindrops hitting the dirt around me. More than I have a right to expect, and as close to a balm as we might get.
Sometimes every song is a ‘for old time’s sake’. It takes my thoughts to the thoughts I had when I heard that song…some time ago. A vague semblance of those thoughts. I never figure out why yesterday’s thoughts feel more precious than today’s.
I like Tom Petty. I won’t ever hear that song I don’t think it’s the sound of his soul. If I could, I’d ask him, it’s not about your niece, Laura…is it?
He calls it a quiet song. When I hear Tom Petty’s voice in that song, it says to me, listen people, this is precious. I want you to listen to this…it’s precious. Damn it, it’s precious. I agree, Tom Petty, it’s precious.
I remember that spell when I listened to John Lennon interviews every night. It was a good spell, and it was a comfort to me. I remember when I used to walk in the evenings, and the last sun of the summer day made its way around me, through the season’s branches and leaves. It was a comfort to me. Winter nights and tall branches standing strong in the cold wind and the night sky, those were a comfort to me. Sitting outside, come July. Sitting outside late at night, the stars, and fireflies, and crickets, and me, and they’ll be a comfort. I trust it’ll all be a comfort, it’ll be a comfort to me.
Do we even notice the moments as they dissolve in the wind? So many lifetimes. So many souls. Time fades yesterday’s dreams, the pictures we see as today’s memories. Person to person, age to age, seasons scatter our precious images, leaving quiet markers to remember tomorrow’s history.
etikser 