Back Porch

Here come real stars to fill the upper skies, and here on Earth C come emulating flies.-- Robert Frost THIS evening I am wondering about the consciousness of fireflies. My wife and 5-year-old son have gone off to bed, and I sit alone on the back porch to do the thinking. I can hear the bedsprings responding to their fitful sleep. In separate rooms, they turn this way and that, captured in a heat wave that envelopes the metropolis like an enormous plastic bag.I mop my brow and search for a flashlight to read the ancient thermometer tacked to the frame of the back door: 85 degrees at midnight.