Date: Tue, 14 Jul 1998 09:33:16 -0500 From: Phanny Subject: [WRITERS] SUB: CONTEST: Festival Title: Festival The woods hold me close, a pine-scented casket engulfing my consciousness as I'm buried in the dying light of a mid-summer's evening. Mosquitoes whine in my ear as I settle into the tall, damp grass where the clearing opens around the narrow canal. This is where the magic happens. In the distance, frogs begin to croak, rhythmic burps of toy-drum percussion echoing off the pines. Reclining on my elbows, I feel blackberry bushes pricking the back of my neck and the scent of honeysuckle is heavy on the night air. There's no wind here in the clearing. Pine trees and brush stifle breezes long before they reach this sacred space. Perhaps the stillness of the air and the humid mist rising from the canal is what draws them here. Maybe they feed on the incessantly whining mosquitoes. Maybe, like me, they're just drawn to this place during the hot summer nights, prisoners of their own imaginations. Darkness falls and they arrive. Singly at first, small glimmers of light at the fringe of the clearing. Noticing each other, they begin to flash in pairs, then trios, finally in teeming throngs of madly whirring golden sparks. The fireflies flash among the trees with wild abandon, dizzying, random, yet purposeful somehow. There is a reason for their dance. Squatting on my haunches at the edge of the clearing, I brush a mosquito from my ear and laugh. Fireflies dance to the music of bullfrogs beneath a waning moon as I open my arms and will what light I have to join them in their festival of lights.