Night Riders by Larry Thacker

Ghosts chase and hop the flashy backs of lightning bugs
carpeting their strobes over the mixed gloaming of the dark end of a day,
the bugs too long wandering for a time from the treetops
where leaves turn their light sides in want of the coming night rains.

The spirits don’t mind the storms. They’ll ride them out,
pull along in the wind, aura drifters with the lighting bugs
wherever they magically lift to when the rains hit,
exchanging rides with others all night.

Is that how we grow haunted?
Accidentally catching a wrong flashing insect on a humid night,
waiting on the cool breeze of a storm. Staring at the crawling bug
too long in our hands. The luminescence rubbing off, trailed,
over our fingerprints. Carried into the house. Into our lives for a time.

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Larry D. Thacker is a writer and artist from Tennessee. His poetry can be found or forthcoming in journals and magazines such as The Still Journal, The Southern Poetry Anthology: Tennessee, Mojave River Review, Broad River Review, Harpoon Review, Rappahannock Review, Full of Crow Poetry, Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, AvantAppal(Achia), Sick Lit Magazine, Black Napkin Press, and Appalachian Heritage. His stories can be found in past issues of The Still Journal, Fried Chicken and Coffee, and The Emancipator.

He is the author of Mountain Mysteries: The Mystic Traditions of Appalachia, the poetry chapbooks Voice Hunting and Memory Train, and the forthcoming full collection, Drifting in Awe. A student services higher education professional for fifteen years, he is now engaged full-time in his poetry/fiction MFA from West Virginia Wesleyan College. Read more here: www.larrydthacker.com

Photo credit: Larry D. Thacker