Moths
                               
1.

Every night I imagined them
weaving ghost galleries in the trees,
their pale wings rustling
like sails of angelsmoke,
their dusty silhouettes fluttering
around the lantern of the moon.


2.

At noon new griefs
hung in the window shade
like the shadows of a thousand bees
that dissolved into a crimson cloud,
then came back to bead my mirror
with a sudden mist of blood.


3.

Images haunted me, flying out of sight
only to return—moments when
the folded bodies of moths
floated like kites
at the ends of silken cords
in a windy dusk.


4.

I did not rise at sunset
to twirl down paths of air,
I did not dine on nectar,
I could not tear what I knew
of lust and death from my shoulders
like a strand of broken pearls.


5.

In a white, bare tundra
the antennae of moths
quivered like feathers of ice.
And layer by layer, imagination
wove for me its golden cave of exile
fastened to a branch of thorn.


6.

Betrayals stalked me. I wore them
alone in drafty cathedrals
like gowns of bitter incense,
I wore them through smoking deserts,
their ghosts swept through me
with the force of deadly winds.


7.

The slow hands of meditation
plucked me like a mandolin.
My visions painted themselves
into fiery red eyes
that glowed and blinked
on the torn wings of moths.