Issue Thirty-Three - Winter 2019

Festival

By Anne Pitkin

Crickets and katydids shrilled
through the summer nights, along with music
from the shantytown taverns—

and lightning bugs like struck match embers
floated on a sea of night air.

On–off, on-off through mist that rose evenings,
they bobbed low to the grass and slow

enough for us to catch them in our hands,
our blood illuminated, fingers red.

We were certain they lit the earth for our pleasure,
as if their amorous signaling had anything to do with us.

We trapped them in jars—all that starlight—
claiming what was never ours.

Later, we’d release them,
a fountain into the dark, a cheer
Then silence.

Copyright Pitkin 2019

Anne Pitkin 's work has appeared in One, Jacar Press, Prairie Schooner, Alaska Quarterly Review, Verse Daily and many others. She is an emerita editor of Fine Madness, a poetry magazine published in Seattle. Her full-length collections are YELLOW and WINTER ARGUMENTS. She is a sometime (before Covid) keyboard player with her friends.

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