Monday, August 1, 2011

POEM: OWL SHRIEK MOTH

Owl Shriek Moth

Owl Shriek Moth that lay fluttering
confused and helpless
in the bright, hot daytime
world of
White Castle parking lot.
In my path,
the same week
I'd found a dead sparrow
in front of my workplace door.

I convinced you to cling to the
bus schedule--
number 16
I ride to work everyday,
and the schedule had
the further benediction and blessing
of a blog bit scribbled there
in hasty inspiration
that morning,
whilst riding on said bus line.

Thank goodness you weren't squeamish
about dying,
or about living either,
and therefore had no shame
in being rescued- even temporarily-
by a big lumbering liquid and marrow filled
lug like me.

I wasn't certain, if I was a last
dying insult from a being of the kind that had
made your world acrid and sour?
Or if the slice of my phone's shutter
taking your photograph as you clung to the
curb

was instead
the welcome of Oisin
to the halls of the Sidhe?
Were you, perhaps,
like me? Wandering from
one world to the next? Drifting
in and out of day and night—sometimes
lost, in ugliness of the White Castle
in sunlight on a summer day;
the smell of carrion and exhaust
weighting down the flight coating of your wings?

With full understanding that I had no
gossamer
or halo to give you,
no material protection at all,
I blessed you with all the strength of
the Faerie Queen's oath
on Midsummer Night.

Then I left you.
To stand there any longer and watch you
flailing, would have been an insult,
and perhaps weakened
my own blessing
with doubt.

I wish I knew
what Oisin would have to tell me,
if he could speak to me
more clearly
than in the tongue of
dead clan-birds on my doorstep
and wounded Owl Shriek Moths
in my path.

I wonder
what he would have to say
about how bright the daylight
after so many years
among the twilight?
And what does he think
about the moths covering their
wings in
the dust of his bones?

I must listen more closely
to the night.

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