The Mortal Delemma of Fairy Tales and Fire Flies

THE MORTAL DILEMMA OF FAIRY TALES AND FIRE FLIES (Brandon, the world depends on the existence of fairy tales and fire flies, the simple kindness towards lesser things, the magnanimity, the compassion of not taking life simply because you can.) Out playing with my son in the day-dwindled dark among the autumn leaves, an enshrined firefly cupped in the apse of my palm, I stoop closer to show him its brief luminosity like an halo, a prayer candle in the breeze its flame, flickering in the grotto of my hands. Suddenly, a swipe of the hand, and the fall begins with a child's first cruelty and here we stand, guilty by the depth of your stroke that felled a star and made the sky dark but for the full moons of your eyes What shall I say to you now, that you are only two and your years thus far have been but the calculation of constants like your parents, fixed planets, fingering the flora of your golden hair as they revolved about you. This is the father’s dilemma, whether to dispel as rumour the faith in fairy tales and fire flies to head off the terror of learning on your own that the world has no morals, nature no ethics steel you for a life of brutality make you a bully, Or nurture that spark of gentlenesss as your jaw drops at the that last spot of phosphor on your shoe, and the glow of a firefly dissapearing beneath the blades like the sun going down on us both. It is the end of the day, summer, and the innocence of your ways. John Tansey