Kip and I walk most evenings at the Black Mesa golf course which is pretty much a desert landscape. It has a sort of nature trail around it with cacti and sage and twisty trees.There are these black beetles who have what looks like a defense mechanism where they freeze and stick their rear ends straight up in the air. Lizards run around all over the place and we see snake tracks across the path. There's an irrigation ditch running around the place. The golf course also has a pond. It's an artificial pond but it still has all kinds of magic qualities. For example, there are carp in the pond. Fancy people say "koi." But they are carp. And right now there are babies. So we are talking about goldfish. There are about seven different colors of dragonflies, blue and purple damselflies, bullfrogs that jump in just as we approach, yellow and white water lilies, butterflies, a heron, an occasional kingfisher, and some sort of purple flower that grows along the edge that looks like an orchid. There are diving ducks, and once we saw Canada geese. Give me a break. I told Kip the other day that this pond is one of my favorite places to stop and stare (I do that a lot) and that, for me, it all goes back to my childhood when we lived in Copenhagen and visited Tivoli. (AKA Tivoli Gardens) There was a lake in Tivoli that had dragonflies and flowers and arches around the perimeter--all made of colored lights. It really was a magic place to me and it was the only reality I cared for--and I could never figure out why a person like me was required to spend most of her time anywhere else. So the other night when we were out walking, a little later and darker than usual, we saw fireflies hovering around over the ditch, and I got that Tivoli vibe again. Two nights in a row we saw them, and then we stopped seeing them.It seemed unusual to see them here in the high desert--but they were there, I promise. The majority of the bugs we encounter around here are pretty disgusting, you know, so that was refreshing... (Take, for example, the gigantic BLACK WIDOW that I discovered this evening an inch from the faucet handle that you have to turn to get water on the tomatoes. I was glad I had a flashlight. Creeepy!) So, anyway, here's a poem about fireflies. I love this poem; still, there are a couple of words that I actually don't like in this poem, that is I don't approve of the way they are applied to the poem's subject. One of them was pointed out to me by Kip. But I won't trouble you by saying what they are. They just defy my personal logic. But you already know that I thought fairyland was the only logical place to be when I was a kid. So I'll let you all guess. Fireflies by Linda Pastan here come the fireflies with their staccato lights their tiny headlamps blinking in silence through the tall grass like constellations cut loose from the night sky (see how desire transforms the plainest of us) or flashes of insight that flare for a moment then flicker out