Little Dreamer (For Lil' Gracie) Poem by Masiela Lusha

Little dreamer of butterfly-people and whispering dolls!
Soft darling ballerina, you are still remembered.
How fortunate I was to tour the happy halls of scented air
With your small pink hand firm in mind. To have your sense
Guide me and teach me to embrace the glittering
Existance of human-fireflies. 'Shh... They hear you.'
How small they were, remember? How wise these
Balls of cotton light proved to be,
To let you cup their life for a changing moment.
You had kissed their air and unclasped your small hand.
Remember how simply they rested between your skin
And their open sky? And you had watched, smiling.
You had learned not to fear this moving darkness,
'Cause this is where they danced, where they
Tumbled through the hushed air, where light became soft,
And all the silent beauty brushed around your mother-kissed
Cheeks and frosted ringlets.

Tonight, a single firefly calls on me, with this fragile dance
You once, with like spirit, taught. She welcomes this rest
in my gaze and invites me to celebrate her starry world.
I dare not tour without your guide. This one firefly.
This small, rolling light dances away from me and then dims
Back into her clandestine sphere of night-dreams and stars.