Fireflies reflect the sun, save a bit for an evening snack, then try to glow to make up for oversleeping at its brightest peaks and most golden valleys. I've been standing watch over their slumber, summer-rising at dawn to the requiem of mourning doves in the season of the fireflies. Last night, Sharkey and I were spending the evening gathering mulberries in the dark, grasping for their fuzzy leaves like a pair of blind silkworms. Our favorite mulberry patch was infected by a nasty blight, a giant splotchy and oozing bud of purples and whites. On our way to the next one was a marsh of cattails and iris, teeming with blackbirds and the occasional head of a still-wandering snapping turtle in wetter months but now relatively dry and empty. However, on this night, it was absolutely infested with a swirling disco of fireflies, a cacophony of little blazes springing up every second as if they were trying to make the most of summer while it lasts. We just stood there, in that hot and heavy June night, watching the light show, marveling at its beauty, its act of resistance just by living. Someday in the near or distant future, I'll be away from the rolling forests and farmland of South-East Pennsylvania, and that's when I'll remember summer nights like this one.
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