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Wednesday 24 October 2012

Moth Dance (An Obscure Reverie)


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File:Emperor Gum Moth.jpg

Emperor Gum Moth (Opodiphthera eucalypti): photo by Fir0002, 2004
 

Kitties came and went all night long
...................................2:30--5:30 a.m.
as in a curious furry nightmare
moth fluttering around the room in the dark
way too late
............for the radiant world...............or is it?

That's the sphere of the lux and
...................................the lumen, spurned
at your own risk --
the dark and the strange, or luminous
.................................and unlucky





Catjump: photo by Les Chatfield, 30 January 2005

12 comments:

Susan Kay Anderson said...

Those pale different bats
leaves or petals
flit float across
the zig zag. Their hours
furry, too. From the moon.
Imposing eye painted false
trick against the switch
swath swipe wipe.

Susan Kay Anderson said...

Give me the obscure reverie
a sphere that is home
the light on
attracting
"lux and/the lumen..."
moth aliases
twins whose mom
was a wolf of olden times
of the old city
new. Milky fog light
lives there
flutters time
small flaps.

Susan Kay Anderson said...

Small moth
big Cat
alongside outer Space.

Souvenir of that
mysterious Dark
matching furry Fur.

Susan Kay Anderson said...

Upside down owl painting
carried on my back
through star wars
and a lunar eclipse--
the moon no longer new
but the cat
jumps over me still
on the shelf
with its Pacific
holdings.

Hazen said...

Like the moth,
we’re creatures
of heat and light
in a place of periodic darkness
moving on brittle wings
through an iron world,
wavering, erratic,
drawn to light,
needing warmth,
sometimes blind to both;
seeking
in this dim room of a world
that one frequency,
our luminous identity,
our spectral signature.

Too far.
Too close.

It’s risky.

Susan Kay Anderson said...

Hazen Lumen

Tiny wafer owl
guide me through
past to lucky to
"luminous identity,
our spectral signature"
find the way
"through an iron world"
by night's light
glancing off it.

Mose23 said...

The last stanza brought to mind the boy drawing the curtains across the moon's light in this painting at a cusp.

http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/joseph-wright-of-derby-an-experiment-on-a-bird-in-the-air-pump

Susan Kay Anderson said...

Moon so far away
yet lessons seem
so near.
What are they?
Marshmallows?

Susan Kay Anderson said...

Kitten Caboodle
under the eaves
set to pounce
wild statue
of intent
like poems
packaged up
torn apart
made real
after being
kicked around
a bit
no head left
just some spleen
heart and tail
saved for predictions.

TC said...

Wright of Derby in the tradition of Caravaggio and Georges de La Tour reminds us how we are all attracted like moths to the mind's illumination.

we’re creatures
of heat and light
in a place of periodic darkness
moving on brittle wings
through an iron world,
wavering, erratic,
drawn to light

The terror of the demonstration of the air pump of course lies in the inescapable fact that the bird deprived of oxygen will soon die, as the children seem to know... while the adults, caught up in the scientific excitement, seem "childishly" oblivious.

TC said...

For me the classic capture of this mothlike rhythm of the wavering mind in the night is Pound's self-losing passage late on in the Cantos,

But in the great love, bewildered

.........farfalla in tempesta

under rain in the dark:

............................ many wings fragile

Nymphalidae, basilarch, and lycaena,

Ausonides, euchloe, and erynnis

TC said...

So that people will know what WB and I are on about, here's the clickable link:

Joseph Wright of Derby: An Experiment on a Bird in an Air Pump.