I walk.\u00a0 As I walk I reach down, scoop a fire-fly into the net of my fingers.\u00a0 He stays there a while, crawls up to the top of my middle finger, and flies off.\u00a0 All the while I walk.\u00a0 Still walking, I reach down, scoop his cousin into my fingers.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I walk, looking at my new friend.\u00a0 As I walk, he climbs to the top of my middle finger, and sits there.\u00a0 I walk, and slowly I realize that he isn’t going to fly off.<\/p>\n
He turns around, looking at me.\u00a0 I look at him.\u00a0 It seems like we both laugh, though neither of our expressions change.<\/p>\n
I am patient, thinking that this may be his first trip on a fingertip.\u00a0 My gait carries us past a jogger, a couple with a dog, a cat on a high deck railing.\u00a0 My friend speaks without words, convaying the sense of a fire-fly, phoenix, living again and again, each season bringing death and<\/p>\n
the promise of another life; life, and its immortal conclusion.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I stop, a shaded wooded area, and look at this phoenix, my lightning-like brother.\u00a0 He turns about, preens his wings and steps off my finger.\u00a0 He flies to my right, over my head, making a flashy exit.\u00a0 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n
I walk on, talking only to the trees,<\/p>\n
and myself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I walk.\u00a0 As I walk I reach down, scoop a fire-fly into the net of my fingers.\u00a0 He stays there a while, crawls up to the top of my middle…<\/p>\n