Fireflies – Valerie's Voice

The Lightning Bug

My simplistic rendition of a firefly since I cannot capture their images with my camera. 😉

We are seeing a delightful show each night in the field behind us, put on by a multitude of lightning bugs (fireflies) so I wrote a poem…



The Lightning Bug

On a summer’s evening
I’m a witness to small wonders.
A dazzling light display
When darkness descends upon the earth.

Beautiful, twinkling lights.
One here, one over there~
A multitude dancing 
Filling the wide-open space.

Bringing joy and wonder
By the simple act of being who they are,
Doing what they were created to do.
The lightning bug.

Valerie Bollinger 2025

And, we had an added perk last night as we watched the full moon rise. It’s so amazing. I love the moon.

7/10/25 Moonrise. In reality the sky is much darker than the picture shows.

A Hedgehog and A Firefly

A flicker of light~
Twinkling and twirling around...
Fireflies at night.

While in Minnesota, our Ukrainian friends saw fireflies for the first time. They were excited. We were with them one evening, and the fireflies were dancing all around us. We all enjoyed seeing the fireflies, as well as our friend’s excitement.

A hedgehog I saw in the wild in Ukraine, 2008.

I told them the one and only time I saw a hedgehog was in Ukraine, and it was exciting to see it. We walked to a village after class one day, to an interpreter’s home, and we saw a cute, little hedgehog tucked away on the side of the path.

God is creative!

“God made the animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the crates that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good.” Genesis 1:24

Summer Haikus

My friend and writing companion, Sheri Eichhorn, and I have a lot of fun writing haikus for just about any word. Haiku is a writing pattern of 17 syllables divided into 3 lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables. Here are a few summer time haikus…I wrote a few and so did Sheri.

Shade from the hot sun
Wonderfully delicious
and very welcomed. (VB)

Bright, sunny flower in a garden in Colorado.

Sparkles in the night
There is magic in the air
Twinkling fireflies. (VB)

Fireflies at night
Blinking in the forest glen
It is enchanting.(VB)

This is a unique card, received from a friend.

Bicycles ask us
to be both the passenger
and provide the fuel. (SE)

Two wheels on a frame
Around and around they go
Bicycles are fun.(VB)

Bicycles never 
run out of fuel until
you climb off the bike. (SE)

And since this is the summer of the pandemic, a few haikus about that…

Pandemic. That word...
it hurts to hear it, it hurts
to know—it lives here. (SE)

Global pandemic
Novel coronavirus
Took us by surprise.(VB)

The distance we’ve come
from normal with this virus
feels too much too far. (SE)