Pink Sphinx Moth, 2007. My once in a lifetime shot.
MOTHS
By Eavan Boland
Tonight the air smells of cut grass.
Apples rust on the branches. Already summer is
a place mislaid between expectation
and memory.
This has been a summer for moths.
Their moment of truth comes well
after dark.
Then they reveal themselves at our
window-
ledges and sills as a pinpoint. A glimmer.
The books I look up about them are
full of legends:
ghost-swift moths with their dancing
assemblies at dusk.
Their courtship swarms. How some kinds may steer by the moon.
The moon is up. The back windows are wide open.
Mid-July fills the neighborhood. I stand by the hedge.
Once again they are near the
windowsill---
fluttering past the fuscia and the
lavender,
which is knee-high, and too blue to
warn them
they will fall down without knowing
how
or why what they steered by became,
suddenly,
what they crackled and burned
around. They will perish---
I am perishing---on the edge and at
the threshold of
the moment all nature fears and tends
towards:
the stealing of the light. Ingenious facsimile.
And the kitchen bulb which beckons
them makes
my child’s shadow longer than my own.
From:
“New Collected Poems” by Eavan Boland, pages 220, 221
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My life is discombobulated and not by a hurricane, but by divorce & domestic violence. My heart goes out to the people in Texas and Florida who have experienced Mother Nature's wild forces. I pray for you all to come through this as better people, realizing that life is not about stuff, but about, well, life. It's what I pray for myself, also. xo, Marion
