The Last Firefly of Summer

I am the last glow in a world growing dim,
A flicker of gold on the edge of the brim.
The chorus has faded, the symphony stills,
The hum of the crickets now quiets the hills.

Where are my brothers, who danced in the night?
Who painted the dusk with their lanterns of light?
Gone with the warmth of the sun's final gleam,
Like breath on a window, like fog in a dream.

I hover alone where the wildflowers sleep,
Where shadows of cattails in cool waters creep.
The air tastes of endings — of soil, of rain,
Of leaves turning copper on branches that wane.

But I am not sorrow, though twilight has come.
I am the heartbeat of all that’s become.
For what is a glow but a promise in flight,
A spark in the vast, unrelenting cold night?

I danced with the wind when it smelled of sweet hay,
I kissed every petal the bees brushed away.
I wrote with my light on the canvas of air,
A bright, fleeting language that vanishes there.

I lived for the moments that vanish so fast —
The crack of a storm, the hush when it’s passed.
The breath held between the first note of a song,
The warmth of a hand where your fingers belong.

The sky stretches wider, the stars sharper now.
The night speaks of autumn with frost on its brow.
I feel it in whispers that pass through the leaves,
The sharp scent of cedar, the cool of the eaves.

I will not regret that my lantern will fade.
I will not grieve for the glow that I made.
For I was the light in a world full of night,
A single, brief ember still stubbornly bright.

There is beauty in endings, in final goodbyes —
In the last golden thread pulled from lavender skies.
For nothing that burns can ever be lost,
Not the warmth of the sun, nor the frost's quiet cost.

I see now the meadow where once we all shone,
The thousands of lanterns now gone, now alone.
But I am still here, with my one little spark —
A lighthouse for no one, adrift in the dark.

The weight of it all does not rest on my glow.
It rests in the living, the dance, the "hello."
For summer will end, and autumn will call,
But the firefly's light, though brief, touched it all.

So I shine, though the air grows colder each hour.
I shine, though the dark tries to quiet my power.
I shine, not for ever, but just for tonight —
For the last firefly is still worthy of light.

- Khushi Kaul