Self-Portrait with Insomnia, Rocks, and Fireflies

I might have been encoded
a few eons ago
as an oblong stone, flat & perfect for skipping,
kissed & kissed & kissed; & if pitched
skillfully enough, Mystic Lake
wets me a fourth time,
then settles me bottomward,
one among millions
cast into the snail's pace of underwater time.

But it's Wednesday, Love,
well past midnight. I've been peering
into the jolt of a black window.
I could swear I see the fireflies
that teased a summer lawn
decades ago, the flash-black-flash of their belly-lamps.
They're beetles, not flies—
did you know that?
                             Neither did I.
A sort of enzyme—Luciferin—combines
with oxygen to create their light.
Nobody knows what makes the light
switch on & off, least of all
the darning needle of my wakefulness
practicing its stalls over a lake
that might have bitten or licked as readily as kissed.

And besides, what I'm calling fireflies
we called lightning bugs. None of us
connected their glow to sex, & beside
you now I'll swear to anything:
I'm that tired in this sleepless daydream
as a deeply appreciated pebble, while a ring
of rocks circles the August lakefront fire—

On each rock, someone chants,
but I chant the most persuasive chant
up from the bottom of the lake.
Hearing that chant, the shell-
halves of our hands keeping time,
all of us thrust into future & past
listen & regret a little less.

-- Steven Cramer