The
tiny flickering glows of those little fireflies are winking out all over,
without a sound
Their
demise was briefly noted somewhere after the real news of Sports and
Entertainment
Still,
some ask, without the fireflies, can the fairies really be so very far behind?
Your
children will not miss them but, as for us, we saw them and we actually
let them go
Their
merely wondrous blinking, wafting in tall meadows apparently was not enough to
save them
For
the spread of civilization brought our ordained progress to bear with blunt
force, against them
Their
bobbing in the grasses proved ineffectual against our blindly-mechanical spread
At
least their demise can be euphemized as simply a sad, but unintended,
collateral destruction
However,
that magical fragility which had once made us skip lightly and gently sing, is
gone forever
The
fireflies are faltering and we lack the time or money to save them, or even
to say goodbye
Yet,
all those who saw them doubtlessly retained the memory for their entire lives
Unlike
all the forgotten entertainment and the randomizing blur of this, our
day-to-day existence
Without
any time for triage their fate was quickly sealed, somewhere well off of, our
social radar
Cool
green lights winking out unnoticed during commercials amidst corporate sports
extravaganzas
Still,
their extinction may have indirectly contributed some tiny fraction to a rise
in quarterly GDP
Yet
all of us have been reduced by this, only marginally beneficial, god-granted
taking of dominion
The
faltering of the fireflies does not prove us to be simply a ruthless and
destructive lot
Their
small vacancy surely does not unzip the very fabric of the summer night
Certainly
their tiny niches must indeed be quickly claimed by other life forms
After
all, every creature comes and goes from the loving breast of this sustaining
earth
Their
humbly entertaining forays paled in comparison to our far weightier concerns
Like
the flowers that we bulldozed, they did not produce or consume, much less reap
or sow
And,
as His good stewards of this entire blue-green world, we cannot be lessened by
their absence
They
formed, after all, but a single stitch in the densely-woven tapestry of life on
earth
The
unnecessary beauty and grace of the fireflies conferred them no survival
advantage
Their
phosphorescence really wasn’t such a magical mystery, viewed thru our earthy
wisdom
We
could always build robot firefly drones with LEDs and artificial swarm
intelligence
Their
demise then but a minor chord in the squishy symphony of fine things being
crushed underfoot
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