Firefly Dreams

You don’t know me. We’ve never met. But as absolutely foolish and ridiculous as this surely sounds, I think I fell in love with you just the other night. I was passing by on your street, strolling about, walking my little poodle Nero, as I often do with no particular destination in mind. I was admiring the way the moonlight fell upon the trees and houses in your secluded neighborhood covering all with a ghostly mantle of snow. Then I saw your house and the light cast by your picture window. I saw you dancing so sweetly within. That’s when it happened.

So dreamlike it all was. Even now I can close my eyes and hear the wind... feel the chill night air...smell the forest pines...see you dancing in your delicate white lace dress.

Believe me; it is not something I intended to do. You mustn’t fear, I will not ask to meet you in person. I will never write you again. These things would be unpardonable from a complete stranger. Still I have allowed myself one indulgence; this letter. Even this may be too much. I ask your sincere forgiveness if my writing to you should in any way disturb your peace of mind.

You may think me a Peeping Tom. I don’t blame you. I swear to you I have never done this before and never intend to again. But somehow I could not help myself that night. I have walked the peaceful eventime back roads of this region for years; it is a passion of mine. I have passed by thousands of houses and tens of thousands of windows. Many had people behind them. Never once have 1 entertained the idea of trying to look inside to encroach upon another’s privacy. Never once.

Then I came upon your house.

I had just passed a large pond by your street. Do you know the one? Surely you do. It is at the foot of the hill, set back from the gravel road and framed by a forest of white poplars. I continued up the hill and around the bend and would not have noticed your house, hidden as it is behind evergreens and tall maples.

I was walking, no doubt lost in some wandering thought, when the faintest whisper of a melody drifted from behind the trees. The music was of that rare variety whose haunting beauty captures the imagination at once with a siren call of things hardly describable. It sang to me of old age and rocking chairs, of distant lands desperately hoped for but never visited, of cherished memories now faded, of leaves falling in a brisk autumn breeze long ago forgotten. I heard children laughing, dreaming their little dreams of a wondrous Halloween Night so soon to come! I saw two young lovers sitting on a porch swing enrapt in their two heart world. I saw tear-streaked faces trying to bear the terrible loss of a loved one. Wordlessly it sang to me of these things and more, filling me with a strange and bitter joy. Clutched in the grip of that timeless, nameless music, I felt I could either turn to the heavens above and laugh or sink to my knees and cry. I did not know which. I stood, transfixed and alone upon your empty street with only the trees and the fireflies to keep me company while an awful loneliness bore through me like icy wind through an abandoned house.

I listened, enraptured, wondering from where this beautiful melody came. My searching eyes danced with the forest fireflies that seemed to flit and blink to the time of the music. And then I noticed the outline of a house set off behind the trees. There I saw a single window alight and behind it a shadow swayed softly in clear and perfect time to the music.

I was transfixed. What sort of person could this be to play such music, both mournful yet triumphant? Who played a score to which fireflies danced and stranger’s souls became wrought with desperate, unfocused longing? What shadow moved to this otherworldly tune?

No driveway cuts through the trees that hide your dwelling from prying eyes such as mine were that night. But there is that small path leading straight away from the side of the road into the trees. It was this I found myself on, walking quietly yet briskly towards your window.

I say I ‘found myself’ because I did not consciously decide to do what I did. I was amidst the trees and nearly halfway to your house when the import of my actions struck me. I halted, aghast. Immediately 1 commanded my body to turn about from this criminal endeavor and I would have done so had the breeze not calmed at that moment, allowing a single clear strain of sound to reach my ears. It was music, but it was the sound of a child’s laughter mixed with the longing sobs of a woman. It gripped me. No other words better describe it. I looked up at the window now closer and clearer.

There a woman’s shadow lilted and slowly spun, framed by the warm glow of soft orange light. Again, with no thought as to moral implications I was compelled to move toward the window, my earlier misgivings quickly forgotten. Soon I was standing beside a large thistle bush just outside your picture window.

At first I could not see you and the music seemed to die away. I watched, scanning the well-lit room for any sign of the woman I’d seen from afar. For a long while I saw only the empty room. My disappointment was unexpectedly profound.

Then the music rose again, softly and sweetly and a woman moved slowly into view. She was dancing to the gentle rhythm. Her arms clasped tightly across her chest and her head tilted just a bit over her shoulder. Her beautiful black hair flowed freely behind her. As she turned in my direction I saw her face. She wore an expression of stinging, sorrowful pain...or was it an expression of soulful ecstasy? Or was it, as such things often are, some mixture both? I could not tell. I strained to see her eyes, almost daring to be caught. I had to know.

And as I watched I was cast back to a moment of my own, to a distant memory almost lost in the pain of deliberate forgetfulness. I was on a beach. I held my Dearest in my arms under the gentle glow of a pearly moon. And she held me. Together we swayed to the far away strains of music wafting out from some nearby home. We held each other tightly, desperately. We knew that the following day would separate us. We couldn’t know for how long…It turned out to be forever and all that remains now is to wonder; Where is my Love? Does she remember me? Does she still care?

For several moments I stood thus and then you turned slightly towards a light on a desk nearby and I saw your eyes clearly. They were tightly closed. They had been closed, I realized, all along. I understood then that you were not in fact dancing in the room I saw before me. Your arms were not clasped across an empty bosom. No. You were dancing upon some enchanted beach, far away in both space and time. And in your arms you held tightly your Love, your Dear. Now gone from you so long.

A sudden wild and inexplicable urge came on me to go and tap upon your window...to get your attention...to ask for entrance...to...to... I wrestled with the terrible impulse until I had mastered it.

Instead I stood there in front of your window watching, watching. After a while I, too, closed my eyes; swaying with you to the time of the music.

For how long I stood rooted there I cannot say but when I found myself again upon the road the crescent moon had sunk now to hang just above the treetops.

…….

It’s daylight now, several days later, and I sit at my desk looking out upon a clear sail-strewn lake as I write these words.

I will never know you... I will never again come to your house or your neighborhood. None but a madman would invade a woman’s privacy, write her a letter about it, and then propose meeting. Two of these I have done. I will not do the third.

Sometimes I lie in bed awake at night, cold moonlight spilling in through my open window. I see you dancing behind your window. I see you moving, your body swaying. I hear that siren music calling me, calling me. And my mind slips back in time and floats away upon journeys hoped for yet never taken.

I think of what I am looking for on my many long walks. And I think of whom your arms long to hold when you dance for the forest fireflies.

Perhaps, just maybe, we dream the same impossible dream.

Cover image courtesy of Nicole Woodward