Skip to footer

Dusk in summer

A poem.

|
Adam Lau/Knoxville News Sentinel/AP
Fireflies fill the air for their annual mating season in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park's Elkmont Campground outside Gatlinburg, Tenn.
  • By Charlotte F. Otten

At dusk when day is standing still,

and darkness lurks behind the moon,

the lightning bugs begin to glow,

they flash their lanterns. Like a broom

my son sweeps air and scatters light

in pieces bright as comet dust,

he runs to catch them, but they rise

above his head, and then a gust

takes them upon another path,

lifts them and showers the neighbor’s yard

with unexpected drops of light,

as thick as rain but not as hard.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Dusk in summer
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/The-Home-Forum/2014/0806/Dusk-in-summer
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe