Most moths die in winter, leaving their brood
to rest in egg & pupae, beaded, pearled, zipped
tight in green & yellow, hanging like burly crescents
from bare branches.
I have no desire to sleep through January & February,
those hard alabaster months—instead, I want to shiver
nightly with the owlet moth as she skips & sweeps over witch
hazel’s yellow orbs.
I want a head start into spring, blending with bark until I rise
& search for honeydew & goldenrod, landing on them with bristled
& scaled feet that taste sugar, sipping nectar through a proboscis under
a strawberry moon.
And when I lay my eggs in the fall, instead of hiding them under stone
& log & leaf, I’ll shout them into the wind—poems of flight, of descent, of
drought, of geysers, odes to wing & slice, to opal & tango, to cat eyes singing
in the dark,
to poppies glowing under that celestial eye that invites moths & me
to rove over & over, that bewitches us to flicker like stars,
like fires at midnight, even on ice-fraught hills,
blazing on naked boughs.