Fireflies in a jar - Poems by Mary Allison Cates

POEMS BY MARY ALLISON CATES: What the Lightning Bugs Know, That Day We Painted Everything Gold, To the Woman Behind Nancy Drew

Last updated: April 5th, 2019

What the Lightning Bugs Know

Between appointments, in rare moments of plain seeing
screaming silence sneaks into their chests
trapping their breath in mason jars
the kind reserved for lightning bugs in childhood
but without the iridescent beams softening the darkness
of an 8:30 bedtime. No holes in the lids now. Just airtight seals.

What is there to do but show up for the next appointment
make more appointments with less time in between
fashion one’s own airtight seal?

Most do not know what the lightning bugs know
that enchantment is not just for childhood and
sticky summer nights and wild flights of freedom.
From open air, to sweaty palm, to mason jar
there is a choice to keep glowing, to soften the darkness
of bedtime with innate invincible fire.

That Day We Painted Everything Gold

There are rules for landscaping.
Tall shrubs in the back, ground covers in the front.
Perennials for summer blooms
and evergreens to cushion winter’s starkness.
I know this now, as I watch you look for your missing Frisbee
amidst a hodgepodge of bare winter plants
whose shapes I studied, adored and chose
according to no rules at all
but with intuitive curiosity and resounding delight!

At least your Frisbee is easy to find.

Do you remember that day we played marbles
and painted everything gold?
We threw out the instructions and made up our own game.
Then we went outside to spray paint a box for your school project.
I decided to spray my running shoes.
I looked up and your face was shimmering with possibility.
The yard looked so skeletal and the paint was so lavish
so I let you spray the bare burning bush,
the lone leafy azalea, the naked weigela and one of the Filbert tree’s arms.

On the way back inside, we bedazzled that silly arborvitae that came with the house.

It’s human nature, I guess, to want to bring order to art,
to make a discipline of digging in the dirt,
to wear matching socks.
There is merit in keeping up with your things
and turning in your school projects.
But promise me that you will tend some part of your own wild landscape
with shapes you study, adore and choose
according to no rules at all
but with intuitive curiosity and resounding delight

To the Woman Behind Nancy Drew

To Mildred, who haunted the pages of my youth
with cold stone Civil War-era mansions
filled with taxidermied treasures
and canaries in golden cages:

Who lets a teenage girl spend the night alone
in a haunted house when her dad is out of town?
Who gives a child a gun and a flashlight
and a quest to uncover secret tunnels and hidden staircases?

You were equal parts ghost and writer
testing the keenness of freshly bathed young readers
turning pages under covers, clutching their own flashlights
hours past their bedtimes.

Did you really keep your writing a secret,
bound as tightly as those gold-spined volumes?
Was $125 per story worth sacrificing
your fame and the thrill of being known?

Steady boyfriend, Ned Nickerson
and friends Bess and George
succumb to their fears and exit the scene
leaving the titian-haired Nancy in Mystery’s depths, alone.

Did you, too, question the integrity of
the floor underneath you and the walls all around you?
Did you find secret doors that took you
to places your friends would not go?

I learned this from you, this loneliness,
This constant quest to shine my
tiny flickering light in the vast voracious dark.
This way of seeking Truth in a world full of fiction.

[su_panel background=”#f2f2f2″ color=”#000000″ border=”0px none #ffffff” shadow=”0px 0px 0px #ffffff”]Mary Allison Cates lives in Memphis, Tennessee where she is a Presbyterian minister-turned fabric shop owner. She and her husband, Andy, share adventures in parenting two primary school-aged boys, who occasionally participate in her passions for sewing, cooking, painting, hiking and practicing yoga. Mary Allison is above all a detective sleuth when it comes to life’s mysteries and was once described by a colleague who said, “If John Calvin and Buddha were to have a baby, that baby would be Mary Allison!”

image: fireflies in a jar via Shutterstock
  1. I would like to hear an interpretation of “What the Lightning Bugs Know.” I took some of it on a literal level, such as the making of appointments, and other parts on a metaphorical level, such as “the choice to keep glowing.” For me, this poem represents unavoidable death, and the juxtaposition of it between our own will to remain spiritually alive. There is just something about this poem that has me reading it over and over.

  2. My general interpretation of that poem is that it’s saying we become uptight versions of ourselves as we get older, but it doesn’t have to be that way… there’s still room for freedom, fun, and dreaming if we choose to use it. Maybe the poet will come back with some comments on the meaning, though!

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