Growing Light in the Garden

Early morning in the hours before dawn
I sit safely on the inside of the screened in porch
and listen to the inky black darkness
to the gurgling frogs and wonder if they are frogs
or maybe it’s the little lizards teasing one another
with soft higher pitched trickling giggles
while it’s still cool and gentle and calm. 

My tiny ancient desk lamp blinds
these tiny ancient flying creatures
that seem to pester only until dawn. 
They hop and sit on the white paper of my manuscript,
scatter across the white tile
and flop a few times before dying. 
The rising of the sun announces their final death
to the singing of mocking birds and cardinals. 
And yet I don’t know who they are,
these tiny, delicate, whimsical,
dainty flyfairies. 

They come only in April and gasp for the light that kills them. 
Harmless,
but before I realize it,
they stick to the bottoms
of my feet and track the house
in the stretch of time
I move about in the silent darkness.

Then as the sun hammers out the pervading darkness
I watch the clouds take shape to the distant sound of the turnpike
like perpetual man-made thunder.
It isn’t pleasant,
but it is constant
with an occasional blast
of a motorcycle
or heavy metal truck. 
But in my visual vicinity
I am in a tranquil garden and
the gurgling of the amphibians quiets
while the songs of individual birds rise. 

A family of hungry chicks shrill whistles nearby
waiting for their breakfast. 
The oak and pine and palm stand still,
like a held breath,
cuing full resting stillness of the hibiscus,
oleander, dragon bamboo, bougainvillea,
walking lilies, fading amaryllis, orchids,
boston ferns, purple showers,
a buddha belly and other exotic plants that populate
my tiny courtyard space...

Until the fullness of dawn seems to launch
frenetic squirrels spinning up and
down the oaks’ trunks and limbs,
their toenails shredding and scratching the bark
sounds like my cousins on the Carolina farm
chasing each other on the golden pebbles of the car path
through the field,
our tennyshoes chewing the gravel,
our giggles gurgling out into the vast quiet of the past
to travel into the future
and linger
vibrant
here
in the present garden
of squirrels and giggling, chirping frogs
and lingering clouds
and dying insects
and growing light.