I walk. As I walk I reach down, scoop a fire-fly into the net of my fingers. He stays there a while, crawls up to the top of my middle finger, and flies off. All the while I walk. Still walking, I reach down, scoop his cousin into my fingers.
I walk, looking at my new friend. As I walk, he climbs to the top of my middle finger, and sits there. I walk, and slowly I realize that he isn’t going to fly off.
He turns around, looking at me. I look at him. It seems like we both laugh, though neither of our expressions change.
I am patient, thinking that this may be his first trip on a fingertip. My gait carries us past a jogger, a couple with a dog, a cat on a high deck railing. My friend speaks without words, convaying the sense of a fire-fly, phoenix, living again and again, each season bringing death and
the promise of another life; life, and its immortal conclusion.
I stop, a shaded wooded area, and look at this phoenix, my lightning-like brother. He turns about, preens his wings and steps off my finger. He flies to my right, over my head, making a flashy exit. He goes to tell reletives less distant than I about the strange man he met in the woods, and how he rode him to the other side of the water.
I walk on, talking only to the trees,
and myself.
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