It’s not that you’re chasing a white moth through the forest; it’s just that she happens to be flying ahead of you, right? It’s just that things come to you when you’re walking. And you to them.
An ephemeral forest pool, fed by spring rains. Here at the top of the watershed the rain doesn’t quite know where to go, so it sits for a while. Ripples on the surface show how any point can be the center of an expanding universe. I love watching them intersect and cancel each other out.
song dogs
on the trail of some
ripe panic
Tiny the child,
sunscreen smooth on his cheeks
like clown white
Grateful, at last, at
(farting my way through Thursday)
…enforced hermitude
Like a taffy pull,
bumblebee clung to one side
of the clover
How forlorn,
the truck’s rumble
without the truck
Imagination
disconnected, I tune
in to the night
Profundities,
Thursday happy hour
tabletop, sticky with beer
a saint, undisturbed
Bus driver, stone-faced
under a handlebar ‘stache
lets the cyclist live
Power, knowing that
you never get this moment
to regurgitate
“I am still freezing”
from Tolstoy’s summation of
his Russian winter
That someone would come
along but no, really you
have to save yourself
Seahawks umbrella
the feather-hook is a seed spiralling in the breeze,
a false signal
it mocks the mayhem of the caught moth down to
its nub stone
its plane is a shell network of dried skin, veined even
it has a spine of sorts
it mocks the mayhem of the caught moth down to
its nub stone
This moth caught in the room tonight
Squirmed up, sniper-style, between
The rusty edges of the screen;
Then, long as the room stayed light,
Lay here, content, in some cornerhole.
Now that we've settled into bed
Though, he can't sleep. Overhead,
He throws himself at the blank wall.
Each night hordes of these flutterers haunt
And climb my study windowpane;
Fired by reflection, their insane
Eyes gleam; they know what they want.
How do the petulant things survive?
Out in the fields they have a place
And proper work, furthering the race;
Why this blind fanatical drive
It’s quiet here. The sky is cloudless. A moth flutters on
the most subtle of breezes. There’s barely a ripple on the
water. If reflections could speak, they would speak of
silence, of harmony and of deep introspection. Locked in
the aquatic mirror, a world of wonder stands fully
exposed to this image of itself. There is no judgment, no
criticism no need for redemption, just a picture of what is
here and now, a picture sprinkled with lily pads and
geese, a peaceful scene at perfect ease...
Bathed in echoes from the surface of the pond, each tree,
each reed, each leaf lives a fleeting second life entranced
in the liquid glass. The moth settles on a blade of marshgrass.
I, a moth with no sense of the day,
Dare not fly,
Lest the silence be marred.
Come, when the pale moon like a petal
Floats in the pearly dusk of spring,
Come with arms outstretched to take me,
Come with lips pursed up to cling.
Come, for life is a frail moth flying
Caught in the web of the years that pass,
And soon we two, so warm and eager
Will be as the gray stones in the grass.
My heart is heavy with many a song
Like ripe fruit bearing down the tree,
But I can never give you one--
My songs do not belong to me.
Yet in the evening, in the dusk
When moths go to and fro,
In the gray hour if the fruit has fallen,
Take it, no one will know.
Blue moth!...
Tiny, pulsating thing ...
You and I met upon a rocky hill.
I paused ...
You paused, and poised
Blue,
Blue on a dark stone:
And all the vibrant sunshine in the world
Was caught for the sparkle
On your tiny wings ...
Blue moth!
Hush of night. Perfumed breath of night.
A moth with flaming wings.
Come beloved.
I saw a vision of death.
Silence held my feet with clinging hands,
And Darkness put heavy fingers across my eyes.
Then Darkness raised her hands, and I saw in the gray shadows
A great night-moth with sable folded wings;
It seemed asleep upon a purple flower,
But as I watched,
Slowly it spread its wings,
And from them shone a gleam of crimson dawn,
And all the world was drenched in showers of light.
Then with his flaming wings outspread
The great moth sailed away,
Like a scarlet boat upon a dawn-swept sea,
Leaving behind a wake of golden light.
And I know that my vision of death
Was only a vision of beauty.