Glow-worm Poem by Vicki Feaver

Talking about the chemical changes
that make a body in love shine,
or even, for months, immune to illness,
you pick a grub from the lawn
and let it lie on your palm - glowing
like the emerald-burning butt
of a cigarette.

(We still haven't touched,
only lain side by side
the half stories of our half lives.)

You call them lightning bugs
from the way the males gather in clouds
and simultaneously flash.

This is the female, fat from a diet
of liquefied snails, at the stage in her cycle
when she hardly eats; when all her energy's
directed to drawing water and oxygen
to a layer of luciferin.

Wingless, wordless,
in a flagrant and luminous bid
to resist the pull to death, she lifts
her shining green abdomen
to signal yes, yes.