028/100 aka 168/365

NATURAL LANGUAGE
Word Count: 300

One of those moments happens, the instant that flies by in the guise of two blue herons flying low overhead against a summer still-light nine o’clock sky. I take it as a sign of confirmation. My study complete.

It’s taken many years but I finally have come to understand the language of fireflies. There is beauty in their dancing lights. There is a nostalgia as with all things in their season, seen only a portion of our year, unavailable in the cold snows of December, just as the first snowfall is appreciated for showing up in its time of winter. It’s a reinforcement of our belief in a never ending cycle.

The fireflies have a synchronic communication with each other. What I’ve studied is their communication with us.

It’s a series of flashing, conducted into a symphony of distance and time. There is a a leader, just as with any orchestra, waving his baton to bring all his companions into harmony. All together they blink a coded message. And they repeat it each night, hoping one of us will understand. Now, after so long, I do.

On the last day of my life, I will rise early and drew back the blind to let the sun tiptoe into the room. I will wear a white cotton dress and sip cranberry-jasmine tea.  I will run with a kite up the grassy hill to the top, then run back down to the bottom. I will eat chocolate ice cream for lunch and I’ll stop to talk to people I haven’t always made time for. I will sit on the porch after dinner and rock slowly back and forth to the rhythm of spring peepers. And just as the blue drains into gray in the sky, I’ll  talk to the fireflies.