Jarflies

Jarflies Low in the grave of rooted earth they tick off the wait, spring night, spring day, to exhale of loud emergence, wet-winged, midway in June's throat, in the startled milkweed air, a racket like hunger to my ears, both young and ancient as the passion to imprint our mirrored selves. Their rasping chord, the goodness that held me suspended in childhood— my grandmother's quilts, bellows pressed breath from my chest, the ton-weight slight now as I dream us back in that old, cold house. Jarflies, she called them while blessings of night fell limb to glider to porch, as oak and catalpa thrummed verses, multitudes of the many and the one. Missionaries of summer, convert us, white-robed in the garden, arise from that dark continent we all must return to. Immerse us in lingering dusk, sweat of beanrow and clotted clay. Our lives lengthened by their brief stay, the iridescent roar that brings me to the doorstep with caught breath, whir of singing circles rock, bark, leaf— bodies dying back to remembrance. —Linda Parsons Marion 111 ...