Terresa Wellborn
Fireflies wind as if blind
through the uneven grass,
remnants of some
forgotten dream.
My companion and myself,
two sisters and their mother —
we teach them
truths we hardly know.
It is as if the heavens have tipped
down, swapped with earth, and
we are intruders lost in a sky of falling stars.
How do you say salvation in Spanish?
My companion shakes her head, she does not know.
My pocket notepad spirals word after foreign word:
found, caught, grappled like trout on a line.
Salvation is slippery.
Fireflies fleet like thousands of tiny ships —
airborne, quickening the field.
Tang of hope.
We follow them, try to jar them — just one,
our nets purling through the warm air.
My life coalesced to this one call.
The evening pools ultramarine.
Who am I, fisher of light?
Terresa Wellborn has been published in BYU Studies, Dialogue, Segullah, and several anthologies including Fire in the Pasture, Monsters and Mormons, and Dove Song: Heavenly Mother in Mormon Poetry. She has a BA degree in English Literature and a MLIS degree in Library and Information Science. Her joys include her four children, books, and chocolate babka. When not on a mountaintop, she prefers to dwell in possibility.