Try to Find the Words

I walked lightly through the house, coffee in hand, with only the lightning showing the way to the front door this morning. Quietly, Ann still asleep, I slipped out onto the porch and sat in the swing while my eyes learned to see in darkness. The fireflies were mesmerizing. 

So familiar. Twelve years ago today, my writing passion began with this passage that appears very early in Slow Road Home. Twelve years and a mountain of words later, I still have to ask “how should I then live” in these days I’ve been granted?  

It is late, and I am last to bed, past the usual time. I step out onto the front porch into the cool, sweet air of early June, and sit on the top step quietly as if not to disturb the wildlife, whose nocturnal day I am entering.

The pasture grasses just beyond the maples are in full flower and their pollen smells like midnight bread baking, while Goose Creek sends up wafts of spearmint, wet mud and turbulence.

My eyes soon learn to see in darkness and I am aware of soundless flashes of summer lightning, and stars overhead. My night vision comes and goes with each flash and pause and flash.

Rising from the dark field on the fragrance of grasses are tens of thousands of lightning bugs. Put them in a jar, shake and see them illumined with the cold translucence of memory. They pulse and rise above the field in counterpoint to the tempo of the clouds, signaling ancient syllables that we could understand, if we were more often still, less hurried, and more at home in our own pastures.

Gravity pulls me down and I lie on my back, on cool stone horizontal, before a mock-infinity of space, wondering what is my place in this world of men and of words? Do I deserve to be so blessed among Earth’s teeming humanity? What must I do in the warmth of this gentle epiphany that is revealed to me tonight and how should I then live?

Maybe I will try to find the words in the morning, after the house is quiet again, and the fireflies have gone to bed, and the world smells of heat and ozone and toast.