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Sharon Dean & Jeffrey Harpeng

Fireflies

Several years ago, I lived on a property where fireflies would appear in early Spring. At dusk they'd flicker like tiny fairies, around the trunks of the pine trees.

I was caring for my grandmother, who was so sick she couldn't venture out.

every night a firefly
released
inside the house

The solitary blinking light had us talking as though Tinkerbell were there to visit.

wish I may, wish I might, be the Queen of the Stars tonight

A Yucatec account depicts fireflies carrying lights from the stars. But no record survives of the patient who dreamed fireflies emerging from the glow of Herr Doctor Freud's cigar and that light then fading and falling as ashes. Carl Jung said the fireflies were Freud's words, and warned him that he would make no progress with this patient.

Chinese lanterns
and among the weeds
fireflies

The same patient also spoke of walking in a forest as twilight deepened. Suddenly he was drawn by the sound of a distant train. Turning in that direction from the ridge he had just reached, he saw the Milky Way stretched above the trees. A breeze rustled through the treetops and also seemed to break the stars loose from the night. They fell snow-like and scattered flickering among bushes at the forest floor. The patient further pressed Freud, insisting that this dream was a dialog with his soul.

love note folded
in the blanket pine needles
and a firefly

Notes:
- para 1 to 4 and 1st & 2nd haiku by Sharon Dean
- para 5 & 6 and 3rd haiku by Jeffrey Harpeng