February and the Oak Moths

bloom among the big dark

trunks that guard the winter

garden: at night

when the house is lit and moist

with its own

ideas of food and sex

they enter, they insert their tiny

plaintive flappings

between the white hot

bulbs of the lamps

and the shades, as if

they were old souls, the slightly

aging parchment-yellow

souls of our own

dead, slightly soiled, slightly

worn with all those

memories that drew them

out of the trees, out of the larval

stupor where they hung

forgetful until

February urged them

back to the light, the

heat, the wet-

grandma Bob Elliot Virginia Richard

impossible

to name them

all in their single annual

minute winging

through the doorway

until they die again,

again become crisp

shells of themselves-

and we can't help

stepping on them,

can't help that as we

pass above them, squeamish, they

crackle like fallen leaves.

Structure

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