Friday, June 19, 2009

Fireflies

Last week, before school ended, I chose this poem as the common text for my classes:

Reverence
by Julie Cadwallader-Staub

The air vibrated
with the sound of cicadas
on those hot Missouri nights after sundown
when the grown-ups gathered on the wide back lawn,
sank into their slung-back canvas chairs
tall glasses of iced tea beading in the heat

and we sisters chased fireflies
reaching for them in the dark
admiring their compact black bodies
their orange stripes and seeking antennas
as they crawled to our fingertips
and clicked open into the night air.

In all the days and years that have followed,
I don't know that I've ever experienced
that same utter certainty of the goodness of life
that was as palpable
as the sound of the cicadas on those nights:

my sisters running around with me in the dark,
the murmur of the grown-ups' voices,
the way reverence mixes with amazement
to see such a small body
emit so much light.

The summer imagery really resonated with me, and I thought it might for my students, too. On a whim, I decided that the homework assignment for that evening was to Catch fireflies, but don't hurt them. I wanted them to have that experience and compare it to the poem and write about it themselves. The kids were pretty enthused about the homework that day, but that night, there were huge thunderstorms. They were breaking even before I left school, so I knew that many students wouldn't be able to complete their assignment. I scrambled a little to adjust my lesson plan, and as luck would have it, I found this poem:

Virginia Evening
by Michael Pettit

Just past dusk I passed Christiansburg,
cluster of lights sharpening
as the violet backdrop of the Blue Ridge
darkened. Not stars
but blue-black mountains rose
before me, rose like sleep
after hours of driving, hundreds of miles
blurred behind me. My eyelids
were so heavy but I could see
far ahead a summer thunderstorm flashing,
lightning sparking from cloud
to mountaintop. I drove toward it,
into the pass at Ironto, the dark
now deeper in the long steep grades,
heavy in the shadow of mountains weighted
with evergreens, with spruce, pine,
and cedar. How I wished to sleep
in that sweet air, which filled--
suddenly over a rise--with the small
lights of countless fireflies. Everywhere
they drifted, sweeping from the trees
down to the highway my headlights lit.
Fireflies blinked in the distance
and before my eyes, just before
the windshield struck them and they died.
Cold phosphorescent green, on the glass
their bodies clung like buds bursting
the clean line of a branch in spring.
How long it lasted, how many struck
and bloomed as I drove on, hypnotic
stare fixed on the road ahead, I can't say.
Beyond them, beyond their swarming
bright deaths came the rain, a shower
which fell like some dark blessing.
Imagine when I flicked the windshield wipers on
what an eerie glowing beauty faced me.
In that smeared, streaked light
diminished sweep by sweep you could have seen
my face. It was weary, shocked, awakened,
alive with wonder far after the blades and rain
swept clean the light of those lives
passed, like stars rolling over
the earth, now into other lives.

After reading the poem, I gave them the choice to describe either the storm or the fireflies in their choice of poetry or prose, and the results were lovely. I thought it was one of the more successful writing exercises of the year. In the hallway between classes, though, I overheard two students talking. "What are we doing in English today?" one guy asked another.

"Dude! We're reading a poem about squished fireflies!"

No comments:

Post a Comment