This year again fireflies come back
glow worms in darkness of woods
from Neponset R. climbing up hill
of the civil war cemetery all the way

Up to Dorchester Park wink glimmer
& high tide almost over the shore path
under the trestle from the burial place
to the next station below the knoll that

Is cradled in the great tidal meander
it seems they once concentrated there
or here this year’s seem to spread every-
where up & down the puddingstone hill

But still I remember them multitudinous
in the set sun darkness of my long gone
youth when they seemed to give promise
that the ugly slashed clear cut forest would

Not come again but time and my own life
say something else, something else just like
it could of, would of, should of never ever
have happened but it did until now we are

Here treasuring every tiny sign of resilience
and each appearance of continuing growth
and life happy for each next deep breath and
content for whatever continuity still exists.

 

James Van Looy has been a fixture in Boston’s poetry venues since the 1970s. He is a member of Cosmic Spelunker Theater and has run poetry workshops for Boston area homeless people at Pine Street Inn and St. Francis House since 1992. Van Looy leads the Labyrinth Creative Movement Workshop, which his Labyrinth titled poems are based on. His work appears weekly in Oddball Magazine.