Luminosity
As a child I chased
fireflies—hidden light
tracked with young eyes
in summer twilight, a few feet
above ground, my eye level then—
colored light from little beetles.
Where does it come from, mama?
Secret light engulfed in darkness.
Somehow I understood
this glowing, this female light—
firefly of inner twilight, lightning
of my current self, staring
into the dark.
….
This poem is from the chapbook Orange Persephone by Margaret Lee (Finishing Line Press) and is available at https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/orange-persephone-by-margaret-lee/
Margaret Lee’s fourth chapbook explores depths of a mother’s love amid tragedy and loss. Orange Persephone invokes the mythical story of mother and daughter, Demeter and Persephone. Demeter, Greek goddess of fertility and harvest, periodically loses her daughter, Persephone, to Hades, god of the underworld, who holds Persephone hostage there. The poems in Orange Persephone cry out in pain, burrow into grief, seek solace in a nurturing earth, and range the unlimited scope of a mother’s love for her offspring.
Margaret Lee is a poet, scholar, fiber artist, watercolor sketcher, and aspiring naturalist. She finds poems in the Oklahoma prairies, New Mexico deserts, Oregon seashores, and inner landscapes. Margaret’s three previous chapbooks with Finishing Line Press include Someone Else’s Earth (2021), Sagebrush Songs (2022), and Oklahoma Summer (2023). Her poems have appeared in From Behind the Mask, (Paperback-Press 2020), The Atlanta Reviewand Pangyrus. Her academic research and publications focus on the ancient Greek language and the history and culture of the ancient world.
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