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ovenbird
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We wander out into the night in order to seek the light: my parents, my children, and me. In a wide open, sparsely treed field we let our eyes adjust to what darkness the city provides. We grumble about headlights and streetlights but there is enough shadow to see by. In the blackest silhouettes we see the impossibly bright flash of fireflies. My father catches one in the basin of his hands and my daughter falls in love with the soul illuminating the life line cutting across her grandfather’s palm. This beetle full of sparks crawls onto her wrist and finds its way into her shirt sleeve, glowing in the cave of her cotton t-shirt. Her eyes glow in greeting. Her smile is a star. The heat of the day has not dissipated and sheet lightning streaks across the sky answering the firefly’s morse_code. Against an electric sweep of cloud a bat dips low. My son sees it first—the erratic flap, the black that is blacker than the night. We all exclaim in wonder. In the middle of an eastern border city we see things we never see in all the west coast wilderness. The heat holds us, we hold the fragile light, our heads bent low to see magic cupped in a gentle palm make a circle that cannot be broken.
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250725
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