Glow

On certain days barely past autumn when the wind is cold and infrequent,

the pain of losing color and passion and desirability can be properly felt.

It is very similar to sitting for hours with no jacket and no blanket draped over shoulders

in a room frigid as the gravestone of a lover

because the mattress is as perfect as it will ever be;

or to viewing a summer night as a child runs to catch a firefly and in success

realizes that the long-sought quarry was not altogether lovely.

Instead of accepting that adorations often diminish with distance,

I see children on a lawn running in corkscrews to catch another, and then another.

They disregard a thousand bioluminescent blurs dancing freely in the dusk.

With happy voices, they race each other to snare the first insect that is as beautiful as light.