Ode to Fireworks

Ode to Fireworks

In autumn my mother drove us to the edge of the field
where the fair was set up year after year:
the carousel, the bumper cars, the long, low sheds
filled with prizewinning animals.
We—my sister, my cousin, and I—were ready for bed,
already in our pajamas. This was a treat we waited
all year for. We waited in the darkness
for the first low, dull thwumps, like someone
beating an old, filthy rug hung on a wash line.
Then we counted the seconds between the lightning
and thunder, as we also used to do, until the sky
lit up: red, blue, green, gold. In my mind’s eye
I can still see the straggly, ancient oak whose branches
reached up past the exhibition halls, silhouetted
against the spectrum of stars that cascaded behind it.

It was one thing to look up into the sky
and imagine yourself in it or to make out pictures
among the clouds, which my sister liked to do.
No, I would tell her, that cloud
does not look like an elephant, a hat, an umbrella.
But it was another thing to see
the sky at night written upon
with those jewels. (We lived in the country:
night was night.) All around us, crickets
stridulated in the stubble of what had been
somebody’s cornfield, their song rising and falling.
You could smell winter on the air’s edge.

Now, in the city, when the sky dips into shadow
at New Year’s or on the Fourth of July, I find myself
craning my neck upward at odd moments.
The city sky is always lit up. This is where we live now,
and it is how we live now, awash in light
of every hue. Everything is a constant celebration:
picking up washing at the cleaner’s or stopping by
the corner market for a loaf of heavy bread.
And the music around me is the music of people,
their voices rising and falling in a hundred languages.
But beneath the yellowish glow deep in the sky
of all our city lights pelting out into the universe,
I remember the feel of the pickup truck bumping
across the ridged field, as I kept waiting for those
childhood bursts, watching as they escorted us home.