“A Moth’s Digression” by Ken Craft

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The Hazards in Catch and Release

 

A Moth’s Digression

 

It was only a lunate zale moth, that hole

on my study wall.

 

I placed my hand over it, then slowly

slid it shut

 

until the cupped darkness fluttered

and my deaf palm

 

felt a whispering inside. Outside,

slowly opening its cell,

 

I saw the moth’s mantle of fur, the soft

chips of dust its wings brushed on

 

the Zen garden groove of fingertips.

A nudge and it flew, ascending

 

until a barn swallow hit it mid-flight,

leaving a brief hole in the air.

                                                       — Ken Craft

                

This poem appeared in my first collection, The Indifferent World (FutureCycle Press, 2016).