Summers of Lightning Bugs

Katherine Hoerth

June 8, 2021

Once, I loved you like a firefly—

remember how they used to make the fields

effulgent like the midnight sky once was?

When this was open fields and the heart

grew wild like the prairie? Do you remember

how each year those lightning bugs returned?

Like spring, the cricket’s song, and wild pigeons.

How their lightshow made of everything

that moves our bodies lit this backyard up?

And one by one, some darkness snuffed the fire—

little mistakes like leaving porchlights on,

the city’s growing glow, the giant flares,

those blazing elephants we can’t ignore

in the onyx skies that are our lives. 

Now, it’s night again. It’s summer, too.

Now I’m sipping bourbon on the porch

gazing into fields of emptiness,

wondering what mountains I must move

to make those lightning bugs return to us.

Katherine Hoerth is the author of four poetry collections, including Goddess Wears Cowboy Boots, which won the Helen C. Smith Prize from the Texas Institute of Letters in 2015. She is an Assistant Professor of English at Lamar University and Editor-in-Chief of Lamar University Literary Press. Her next poetry collection, Borderland Mujeres, will be released by SFAU Press in 2021.