before the fireflies
made an appearance

about the time cicadas
began their buzz

when the men were lighting
after dinner ****

and moms clanging dishes,
a noisy resentment

I was on the street, with brothers
named Harry and Johnny

playing baseball, mostly
missing our catches

it had not registered in our grade school heads
dusk was not good light for hardball

nor had we learned what it was like
to see anything die

save the bees we suffocated in jars
(forgive us our sins, Father),

though that night, the last day of school,
the stars were all aligned

IF the creator wanted us to see
mangled mortality:

he came around the corner of
Vandenburg and Vine

in his graduation gift--a hot new Chrysler,
all chrome and crank

the telephone pole he hit didn't see him, or
complain--it remained straight, tall

when the driver went through the windshield
and his skull introduced itself to wood and pitch

my dad was the first to come through
the door, though other fathers followed

I recall colors, though muted
by the fading light

red, red, pink, even white and gray and blond--his hair,
flattop still in place

well, it was on the half head I saw
from across the street

where Harry, Johnny and I were conscripted
to stand

my mother brought a yellow towel,
to stop bleeding I thought I heard

but my father never used it, telling her
instead to bring the green army blanket

which he draped over the boy's body the very second
before we saw the ambulance lights

by then, the fireflies were beginning
their dance

we were told to go inside, to hide our
eyes from the body on a stretcher

the slamming of the ambulance doors,
which I watched through our window

while my father used Lava soap to wash his hands;
then my mother pulled the drapes

blocking from view the pole, the crushed car,
and the glow of fireflies drifting above it all