Moth

Something sent him. Arriving, he must be received,

With grace, with gentle grace,

As gentle as the sound he makes,

The sound with which he touches my not yet sleeping soul.

For I am awake. I receive him.

He has come to play in the darkness,

Instead of maddening buddleia he finds only walls,

A record player, 

Some book shelves,

And a cross that hangs in its own exposition of 

Loneliness: the adorers all are gone.

But one… and his music is quietness, the beating moth wing.

I wager my night friend is violet.

There is ivy looking in,

The ivy looks and listens with his dark green palms,

Spread in stars, pressed on the window panes.

Clock hands are quiet. 

Your moth quietness is a sister of the tick of clock hands,

A brother of the breath sound of a flame

Beginning to live, continuing to live, at a candle wick.

You are a candle, Moth. You are a wick.

I follow, with the mind of a thirsting soul, an awake soul,

My whisperer, almost annoying, cadencer

Uttering in his breath black voice:

I am here… I am here.

Where are you? I’m looking.

I look for you, somehow more sound than a shape,

Your fluttering form floats in a box of quiet sound,

The flutter now flaps 

In a haste without dignity.

I am here… Where are you?

Toucher, you somehow give me words, and stir my still hair.

Dark petal, you move with the owl,

A feather moved in the little jet that comes from 

The screech owl’s mouth,

I have noted (you): stirring.

Then Moth comes by like a leaf:

I have a little light:

Her wings are of milk,

An unlesser white,

Fetching buttermoth,

White as cauliflower, you don’t munch much do you?

White as a crab spider I once saw on a buddleia bell.

Orange tipped, sewn into his silk

Stains of floe, inks running to do his bidding,

A taking colour, I love it in the comma.

How far have you flown?

I am pleased by this visit.

Moth sails and steps on a pond of air,

With  metaphysic crease, an invisible splash,

The waters glimmer with irreal upset,

Exquisite the flash of flurry,

Hurry your dip, hurry your climb to quick clime

And then: fall! On a roll of big breath.

Moth, you are dear to me. Am I dear to you?

Oblivious pretty vexation? Lamp addict?

Randy flirt?

Lawrence had a snake, a tortoise he loved,

Geoffrey-cat who creeps into the red hold

Of the hand that loves him and sings

His praises, servant of god,

The windhover, amorous, windy, turning, percher,

Rebuffer, colourer, heighted one,

Cowper’s hare, the lark at break of day, his heights, his 

Hymns, Shelly called him blithe, he’s to one thing constant never,

But life, but life, bonny life,

Who counted and noted the birds that surely stopped and rested and listened

To great saint Francis speak, not long, not loud, lovely unloud, unlong…

The night’s tranquil accident has delivered him

Here, my moth, she had been blown, flown

On some wind, welcome arriving.

There’s an idea only the breeze can catch, not the storm,

The quietness, the pit pat leaf rain, not grumpy tempest,

Violet things, unassuming spirits, breaths

In dark, not only the lion,

The turning and winding wield of the tern is as

Great as the more-than-hawk cry,

Leap, and barbarous tumble of the eagle.

God is in my room, and I

Greet him in my heart, hearty measure upon hearty measure:

I am glad, recipient, friend.

He doesn’t heap me. But he courts me,

With beautiful bubbling shapes.

I will not turn him away.

My babbling aria, frantic your serene!

Out light, be no more, Light: 

But still, in the nightdark, now crimson:

Flirt…pit pat, flutter,

A voice, a breath voice, a dark voice, 

An almost perfectly quiet voice, that says:

I am here… I am here…

I am…

I am here