In Tennessee I Found a Firefly

By Mary Szybist Mary Szybist

Flashing in the grass; the mouth of a spider clung

to the dark of it: the legs of the spider

held the tucked wings close,

held the abdomen still in the midst of calling

with thrusts of phosphorescent light—

When I am tired of being human, I try to remember

the two stuck together like burrs. I try to place them

central in my mind where everything else must

surround them, must see the burr and the barb of them.

There is courtship, and there is hunger. I suppose

there are grips from which even angels cannot fly.

Even imagined ones. Luciferin, luciferase.

When I am tired of only touching,

I have my mouth to try to tell you

what, in your arms, is not erased.

Source: Granted (Alice James Books, 2003)

Biography

Poet Mary Szybist grew up in Pennsylvania. She earned degrees from the University of Virginia and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was a Teaching-Writing Fellow. Her first collection of poetry, Granted (2003), was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and in 2009, she won a Witter Bynner Fellowship. According to judge Kay Ryan, Syzbist’s “lovely musical touch is light and exact enough to catch the weight . . .

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