Thank God I'm Not a Poet

Went out with the guys for a few rounds of airsoft. For those not familiar, airsoft is basically paintball, but with 6mm plastic BBs. Eye protection is a must. In warmer months, so is bug spray. We went out to Pokey's grandpa's place, where there are acres of thickets and tall grass--prime places for guerrilla tactics. Of course, guerrilla tactics end up being reduced to crouching in sodden underbrush, mosquito dope making your skin tacky and feverish (mosquitoes still whining in your ears, alighting on the bits of flesh not doused in repellent), and being shot by people you can't see but somehow know exactly where you are. It's muggy, it's dark, your clothes cling damply to your skin, and your legs feel like they're on fire from crouching for so long. Every sound you hear is someone creeping up on you, and you expect to feel the wasp-sting of BBs from the gun of someone almost close enough to touch you. In spite of all this, you are having fun.

Pokey and Kyle shelled out big bucks for high-powered equipment, fully automatic assault rifles that make my little battery-powered automatic look like a cap gun. They pack one helluva punch: I've got bloody welts on my left leg from being shot at almost point-blank range. Through cargo pants. Those two almost always seemed to be on the same team, too. We called them on that.

When it became evident that the rounds were taking too long in the thickets, we decided to move it out to the meadows behind the house. The plan was to do some rounds of capture the flag or king of the hill. Never quite made it to that. After the second round of shooting, we could smell a skunk. Nature's jackass. "Oh, hark! I hear loud noises! It sounds like those Human-Things and their guns. I'll investigate. Oh no! They're big and scary! How could I possibly have known? Should I run away? No, I'll just spray them with my foul secretions. That makes perfect sense!"

None of us got sprayed, but still. What the hell, Skunk? What the hell?

Anyway, I guess the whole reason I made this post was to describe the meadow. It was dark, with storm clouds blotting out the stars, but even so I could still see the shape of rolling hills in the darkness. And amidst the shades of black and gray, were thousands of fireflies. Countless points of green light, winking out, returning. Eldritch. Fay and mystical, strange. No wonder people used to believe in fairies. After taking a hit to the shoulder, waiting off to the side for the round to end and the next to start, I would stare out at it. It would have been peaceful, but my system was still churning out adrenaline. A proper poet would have mentioned something about the stars descending to the earth for a night of frolicking in the rain, time spent communing with those who normally look out at them in their cold distance and ponder the strange worlds that circle them and the strange peoples that call those worlds home. Lovers would have marvelled at the simple grace of nature, would have watched the green sparks in each other's eyes.

Instead, I thought it funny that most of nature's beauty and elegance is the result of some one of her creature's trying to get a piece of ass.

And instead of lovers, the fireflies got a loud bunch of irreverent guys who ran and tramped through snarls of high grass and burst through tangles of brier and thorn, covering themselves in mud and scratches, sweating through bug repellent, and hurling curses and taunts along with those plastic BBs.

I like to think we annoyed those fireflies just a bit.