Fairy Tale Of The Moth

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Fairy Tale Of The Moth

(a 55)

 

 

 

In the Amazon there's a moth
who lives by drinking the night-tears
of sleeping birds.

By day she's folded asleep
in deep green chambers where purple frogs
sweat pearls of poison.

If she dreams, it's only by accident.
At dawn the birds fly up, eyes
open for song, tears given

without intent or knowledge
as I give mine, silver life
to the mouths of memories.

 

March, 2024

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted for WGWL at Shay's Word Garden

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Process Note: Gorgone macarea is the moth referred to here, one of several species of Lepidoptera who pratice lachryphagy for survival.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Image credits: Blue Morpho Butterfly, 1865 © Martin Johnson Heade 

Great Peacock Moth, 1889 © Vincent Van Gogh 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Empty House

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Empty House

 

 

 

The Parisienne within

sits gracefully bent at a small cafe not

three blocks from the Louvre.

The square is an old negative, each color

quenched in its reverse, as she sighs,

 

regards the croissant moon, a dangling puff pastry

pinned to a papier-mache sky some

rabid surrealist has daubed flat black, faintly

tinted by the violet blood of stars. She waits here

for her assignation: l'etranger dangereux

 

encountered by chance on le Metro. She savors again

the fragrance of strong dark tobacco

caught in his hair as they swayed far too close.

She waits many hours since her house is empty and

waiting seems better than that.

'And what is an empty house,' she muses

over her fifth vin de pays, 'but a cupped palm

dripping the bright constant stigmata of 

your own imperfections?' No amount of pancakes can

fill its hollow stomach. No birds will nest in

 

its unkindled chimney. There is only dust white

as milk, silence and dead flowers,

a dog that barks a heartbeat somewhere in the distance,

abandoned without music like the deserted cafe

the Parisienne has just left.

 

As the rackety clap of her stilettos

fades around the corner,

a tall shadow drifts over her table,

but there's only a thin thread of ghost-smoke

twining up from a stubbed-out Gauloise.

March 2024

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

posted for 

WGWL 3/4/24 at Shay's Word Garden