Moth Song

Virgil Elliott



  

Moth Song

I tasted it, the gold

In the gold, I saw the sweetness

At the end of my uncoiling

Tongue, by the beautiful ends

Of what curved from my forehead,

And I swam, gliding, I dove

Through the air toward gold

And sweetness meant to be

Chosen, begging to hold me

And be drawn inside me.

But I stop now, I hang

Still, suddenly suspended

Without having chosen to be

Still in a breeze still full

Of calling and beckoning

Red and blue around gold,

And what comes to meet me

Holds me and turns

My body, spinning a lightness

Around me to fold my wings

Close into a darkness,

And it turns me slowly

Into a flower and drinks me,

And I open, I become

Completely known, I blossom.

David Wagoner

Smoke and moths - we're seeing a lot of both of those these days. Forests burning, moths swarming - it's as if a surfeit, a splurge, a super-abundance has, yes, "blossomed" around us, swirled us within its rhythms, moved us with its influence. Every 10 or so years, when the conditions are just right, the moths come out in great numbers, any window with a light behind it is covered with fluttery moth-bodies, any outside light obliterated with feathered furies. Add to that this misty-musty thickness of smoking forests - it's a strange atmosphere. 

But the poem intrigues me for other reasons as well. This bewildering lure of destruction - what is this? What draws us toward our demise? Why do we dance with death? What is the fascination of fire? I have no answers to this, only questions.

Villanelle for a Season's End

Andrew Wyeth

Villanelle for a Season's End

Autumn is here, and summer will not stay.
The season cuts a bloodline on the land,
And all earth’s singing green is stripped away.
Your leaving drains the color from the day.
The oak leaves’ red is clotting in my hand.
Autumn is here, and summer will not stay.
The sea fog settles. Even noon is gray.
The light recedes as though this dusk were planned.
The green of field and tree has slipped away.
I shiver on the beach and watch the way
The berries’ blood is spilled along the sand.
Autumn is here, and summer will not stay.
In the chill air the knotted weed heads sway.
The waves have swept your footprints from the sand.
The green of all our fields is stripped away.
See how the wind has scattered the salt hay
Across the dunes! Too well I understand:
Autumn is here, bright summer will not stay,
And all earth’s love and green are stripped away. 

Luci Shaw 

For those with a melancholic streak, Autumn gives that satisfying mix of beauty and loss to mull over, even savour. I especially appreciate how Luci Shaw writes of the colour draining from the landscape, how the vividness and delineation of things dulls and greys. How we go from singing green to clotting red and foggy grey. And those telling words - "stripped, clotting, slipped, spilled, knotted, scattered, swept" - that sensation of being bereft, of needing to pull one's coat closer around one, is expressed exquisitely.