the great leslie

I've just returned from Maine, where I spent four lovely nights alone at the family cabin in New Sharon, Maine. I do love Maine. It's my favorite state in the Union, which is saying something: I've been to 47 states. Or it's saying nothing, since I was born there and went to high school there and am obviously biased.

Wednesday night was clear, and the moon was full. When the moon is full, the sky is a beautiful color, and the trees and farms houses were like black cut-outs on the midnight blue horizon. I was so glad to be back in the country.

It wasn't clear again until Saturday night. At dusk that night I watched the lightning bugs begin their evening activities, flickering in the bushes and trees. Looking up at them streaking across the sky, the fireflies look like shooting stars, albeit a bit closer. They are part of the here and now, the reality of greatness on the ground. A shooting star is a wish, an ethereal vision of a world beyond our own. But a streak of light above one's head is a streak of light, is it not?

I arrived back in New York last night, around midnight on a Greyhound bus. Just before entering Manhattan, I saw a lone lightning bug in a grassy area near the street. It was flickering, but it was alone. No friends flickering back. A firefly alone in the city. I felt it a kindred spirit.