Noctuidae

I. Flame Shoulder

Summer has rolled over
to the damp sheets of August.
The girl with the flame shoulder
starts over, as she must.



II. Heart and Dart

Then one right after another,
he dropped them in the stream:
the flame girl's heart, his broken dart,
and two swift-sinking dreams.



III. True Lover's Knot

In winter, water all is dark
And dreams sleep, muddy, caught;
her bed is cold, his fingers numb
in stiff true lover's knots.




photograph by André Felipe de Medeiros

The Axis

White moths have crept through the cracks
in the window screens and now they trace
dizzy spirals over my snowdrift comforter. Up
to the lights in the high ceiling, down again,
dazed, disoriented, more in love than ever
with what they believe is the moon.




photograph by Paul Tyler

May 20th: There is One Moth

There is one moth in plain brown robes
who beats against the window.
From the darkness where it flutters,
my home must look like heaven.
And will I close the shades
and learn to ignore this small sorrow;
or shall my eyes stay, pious too,
fast on the heartless pane?




photograph by Nikki Fowers

The First Night of Open Windows: A Census

One lazy-looking spider, possibly
the same one I tossed out the back door
this morning. Two ladybugs.
The fist-sized moth with wings
like the Constitution. He was confounded
when I shut off the kitchen lights.
The refrigerator
would like to be counted.

And then there is me, outlined in light
at the mouth of the closet, hand
to my face in the search
for the right nightshirt
for a night such as this.

Somewhere outside,
a frog calls his children.




photograph by Joanna Blusiewicz

The Moth

Every pothole was a puddle on the day that she came, and rain
soaked the porch until it groaned. The screen door was a perfect grid
of shivering beads. It was her face
that I saw first, the alien moon-mask of curious calm.
Legs followed, a plump fuzzy body,
slender wings that twined like toes
on the dripping door handle. I brought her in.

In the midday rain the kitchen
was cabin-dark, and I thrilled to small feathers
on my wrist. I don't know
how long I sat like that, begging my skin
to remember this touching, this being alive.
I set her on the counter by the toaster
and watched her over my book, this marvel
of somehow staying with me.

Eight days we conferred together,
me with toast or a crossword,
she not eating, staring still. One sunny afternoon
the breeze was kind, kissed the dandelions
not unlike her crooked feet. The field guide was thick
but I found her there:

Actias luna, family Saturniiae.
Life expectancy: 7 days. Outside, the sunshine
laughed at my shock. I crossed the kitchen,
blew on the fragile jade wings, watched the furred phantom skate,
empty as a paper boat, toward the sink.


photograph by Chris Wright

Two Deaths

The dead moth’s eyes see only silver mist.
Her body is a tiny paper heart in my hand,
A valentine in white fur and sickly green silk.
She curls on the dashboard of my Honda,
The one real thing I have touched today.
Motor oil singed one spot.
Her arms bend to grasp but nothing fills
Her stiff embrace. I have no glass casket
Worthy of these cold wings, and she stays
Overnight in the car.

Where the bedroom wall meets the ceiling a fly flails wildly.
Sometimes in silence, more often with the buzz I only hear
When the lights are off.
I do not see the spider who will stun him,
The siren who will suck his black life out into thin air.
I hope she is nearby, that this inelegant,
Crude death is not for a host long-gone,
But the sheer nests near the ceiling have been
Empty for some time, their contents fading
All for nothing.


photograph by flickr user pinkpoppy