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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

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