I grab my lawn chair and ridiculous dog and head down to the river to watch the fireworks.

The detonation of explosives into bursts of color attracts me like some stellar lodestone.

It’s a huge nocturnal art opening with the abstracts of the avant-garde blown into pieces.

I am riveted.

Maybe it’s the crowd.  No way it’s the shattering noise.  For sure it’s the sight of the toto dog leaping up to catch an incendiary orb.

Maybe it’s even the fact that a fireworks display outdoes its potential and pushes the envelope on kinetic, especially at the end when it lurches into staccato Picasso.

Although it remains constant, the image of an iridescent sphere shattering into hues that rain down over the crowd only to evaporate elates me.

I wish my writing could burst with such amazing images and then disappear into the reader’s mind.

Instead I just seem to ignite the occasional volatile verb, watch it flare into the void, and then pronounce it a dud.

I am a Fourth of July poet stuck in November.

Maybe one day the toto dog and I will at least catch the singed tail of a comet between our teeth.

Copyright 2009