Brian Lee Klueter

Out the Window

by Brian Lee Klueter

We call them lightning bugs in Ohio, the same way we say pop instead of soda. Calling them fireflies brings only reference to the immortal Joss Whedon show, or the squinty-eye confusion our buckeye faces so often display.

In late June, early July, the corn is still growing for harvest, getting taller and taller, day by day. The road between Defiance and Bowling Green is bordered by cornfields for the entire length of the 45 minute journey, stopped only by a few small country towns along the way. The air smells of sweet dirt, driving with the windows down. When I look outside, the corn is just below my eye level, creating a unified sea of stalks.

When lightning bugs glow, they do so in pulses, never keeping a constant strain of light. It’s fun to catch them and put them in jars, but it’s even better to grab one out of the air, gently, with the palm of one’s hand, letting them walk up your fingers to the highest point, taking flight with the natural grace of the insect kingdom. They are the only bugs I can stand to be around.

When driving at 60 miles per hour, I always go five over the speed limit, the impact of one of these bugs on a clear windshield is an event in itself, exploding on impact, but leaving its glowing remains behind for a few extra seconds, eventually fading out. Like their souls are catching up to them.

There are a couple days during this time at dusk, when the lightning bugs are at their peak. They’re everywhere, outside every house, surrounding every barn. I look outside my car window, and I can see hundreds of thousands of them, maybe millions flying just above the corn. All of them pulsing in their own way, yet visually binding with the rest. A sight of that many insects together is rarely beautiful, but the moment is there, a glowing sea of life.

Dozens of them die as my car races down the road, the glowing mess getting larger and larger, and combined with the sea, create an experience so full of life and death that the human conscience cannot help but appreciate the vast complexities of merely existing in a universe we will never understand.

Brian Lee Klueter is a senior creative writing major at Bowling Green State University, and is the creative nonfiction editor at Prairie Margins, BGSU's undergraduate literary magazine. He has previously been published in The Blue Route, and Enormous Rooms.