The lonely gravel road was a silver snake winding into the middle of farmland nowhere. The stones bit through the thin soles of my tennis shoes and the air, slightly heavy, prickled my skin. The night was clear except for the moon and a few stars which made the grass stand out in stark relief--yellow stalks almost as tall as me.
The fields around the road were fallow. Weeds and grasses had taken over for the year and hid the compact ground beneath. Crickets harped like bull frogs, also hidden in the grass. I jumped from the uncomfortable gravel to the edge of the field. Hearing nothing squished beneath my feet, I waded forward. The grasses were antennae brushing against my arms and legs. As I moved further inward, the crickets sounded louder. Did they hear me coming?
Something brushed past my ear. What was that? I looked up briefly toward the sky--it was brighter up there--not quite dark, a luminous navy. Dark spots moved lazily against this background in a complicated dance. Some of the dark spots flashed bright green.
I raised my hand and felt something drop onto my finger. Cupping my hands to see what I've caught, the firefly crawled into the depression of my palms and flickered. For a moment, my hands were illuminated, a fleshy neon, with a slim insect in the middle, ruddy, discrete, except for his flaming behind. A crackle popped in the air above and I raised my head to see the first of the fireworks, a streaming liquid that bleached the night.
Looking back down to my hands, the firefly was gone.
KevinDonahue.com. The author (of the same name) talks a lot about golfing, his wife, and politics. Oh yeah, there's also a liberal sprinkling of memes. Interesting in a traditional webloggy kind of way. My Scribble. This one looks new as the author only started in late June of this year. The design is certainly unique--did she draw the picture herself? And the list of shopping links seem indicative of...something. Blue Lenin. Stopped in February due to Geocities' change in FTP policy. Oh well. Q Daily News. A weblog with intelligent commentary by a New York City doctor. My only gripe is the archiving system. There's no good way to get all the back entries with one click. PeachBeach. Another dead site. Rantings of an Unexploded Scotsman. There's some very good writing in here. The Adventures of Soopa Pig. Mostly day-to-day mundane accounting. Plus baby pictures. More suitable for the author's friends and family. War is Peace. A dead end. Only a poem about 9/11 remains.
