INHERITANCE

Remember butterflies and fireflies
Dodging and flashing on hot summer nights
Remember stars lighting the way for children to dance?
We positioned our jars and lids on either side
As we trapped their beauty and kept it inside

Now I’m a man 66 years old
But my memories are young, still learning to walk
Tired of the talk which has long deafened my ears
Now wanting to listen, now wanting to hear

How do I know if I’ve seen God’s face?
Was it hidden in and around the sky and its space?
Waiting for children to laugh in the night
Catching sparkles of light shifting in flight

We truly found what forever we’d keep
Without toiling or reaping it swayed with the breeze
And there it was while we were so young
Remembered like waves catching the sun

Those in our cities and ghettos
Never living without tensions or strife
Where children can’t hear the crickets of night
May be bereft of these memories and snapshots in time

Still, they might have a place where thieves neither break in or steal
A place that is theirs, a place that is real
They might stand on a roof, headlights sparkling below
Knowing soft places where peace ebbs and flows

But we were all children, a billion years old
As we witnessed those firefly nights
And we captured a place with no space and time
Where the world was just yours and the world was just mine

Peter W. Johnson — 8/01/2018

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