Were It Not for the Firefly

Summer’s hot and summer’s humid:
Summer’s trifling, endless, stupid.

Summer’s games waste on all night,
insects swarm under the lights,
mindless phototropic creatures,
like the people in the bleachers,
mesmerized by play-by-play,
eating dogs while they decay.

Dogs bark man at crack of dawn,
roaring mowers bite the lawn,
deaf’ning blowers blast the dust,
wound with gas exhaust disgust.

August: Annexed 8 B.C., when
Ceasar named a month “for Me!”
because his uncle Julius
already seized July from us.

July the Fourth: The flag’s still there!
The fireworks, bursting in air,
remind us all of war’s delights:
Our children’s fate is firefights.

But wait… retreat.
                                           The firefly —
in quiet night, in starlit sky,
with summer’s Milky Way aglow —
still winks of wonders yet to know.

The Tipton Poetry Journal , Issue #61, 01 September 2024, p. 10.

Notes: Ever wonder why the months – September, October, November, and December – are the 9th to 12th months of the year, instead of the 7th to 10th as their names imply? Now you know: Julius Caesar and Caesar Augustus.

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