Today marks my 70th birthday. Out of curiosity, I googled, “Gifts for Turning 70” on Amazon, and among mugs, hats, blankets, etc. inscribed with some version of, “I’m not 70. I’m 18 with 52 years experience,” was the Retro Candy Yum — 1953: “70th Birthday Gift Box Nostalgic Retro Candy Mix from Childhood for 70 Year Old Man or Woman Born 1953.” As many of you know, I have the taste buds of a 7-year-old and was disappointed that two of my very favorite candies: Smarties and SweeTARTS were not among the gift box mix. No worries, however, as I can now afford to buy both in bulk and store them among all things artful on my book shelf.

Speaking of 7-year-olds, I became a kid again the morning of May 28 when, at the beginning of a morning sunrise walk at 5 a.m., I encountered a stunning display of firefly fireworks. The photo at the top of this post and the following photo don’t begin to capture the magic of the moment:

As it turned out, those fireflies lit the way for what would be an amazingly beautiful morning.

The morning of May 28 was indeed a morning to “lift your hat to,” as Emily Dickinson would say about the word, “phosphorescence.”

Speaking of emitting light, I also out of curiosity googled, “Poems about Turning 70” and came across the poem, “Becoming Seventy” by Jo Harjo, the former poet laureate of the United States. Harjo wrote the poem for the 70th birthday of her close friend, the poet Marilyn Kallet. The poem, “Becoming Seventy,” is quite long and took me several reads. A New Yorker reviewer (8/29/19) saw in this poem particularly its last line, “unbridled potential for the poetic — in everything, even in ourselves. In that fact is beauty, and perhaps redemption. All memory bends to fit, Harjo writes. We become poems.”

Speaking of becoming poems, I then googled “Poems + Marilyn Kallet” and came across the poem, “Fireflies,” an example of finding beauty and redemption in poetry:

In the dry summer field at nightfall,

fireflies rise like sparks.

Imagine the presence of ghosts

flickering, the ghosts of young friends,

your father nearest in the distance.

This time they carry no sorrow,

no remorse, their presence is so light.

Childhood comes to you,

memories of your street in lamplight,

holding those last moments before bed,

capturing lightning-bugs,

with a blossom of the hand

letting them go. Lightness returns,

an airy motion over the ground

you remember from Ring Around the Rosie.

If you stay, the fireflies become fireflies

again, not part of your stories,

as unaware of you as sleep, being

beautiful and quiet all around you.

“Imagine the presence of ghosts,” “your father nearest in the distance,” “childhood comes to you,” “being beautiful and quiet all around you.”

I shall hold these lines close as I continue onward becoming seventy, becoming a poem.