The Only Thing

notes on the luna moth

the luna moth has no mouth
let that settle
no mouth and still it flies
toward what it mistakes for the moon

i could call this brave
the way i call most ruin brave
the way i call my own night-stumbling
a kind of faith

but faith requires a mouth
something to say yes with
something to swallow the dark back down
the moth just burns

it emerges silk-damp
already spent
already mid-countdown
its whole green life
a week of wingbeat and wanting
practiced on light
on any light
on the wrong light

i have been the wrong light

the moth orbits what will kill it
and calls that devotion-
no    the moth calls it nothing
the moth has no mouth
i am the one
who keeps naming the circling

it finds its mate by scent alone-
miles of dark    negotiated by chemistry
the perfumer's longest prayer

say desire and the wings fold different
say survival and the body
disagrees
the moth doesn't persist-
it spends
it was given a week
and a hunger it cannot feed
and two enormous eyespots
that see nothing
that exist only to frighten

imagine being built
to terrify what you cannot even perceive

i keep a list of things without dark thoughts:
the moth    the fern    the resin
the way ice forms
without opinion
the way the luna finds the porch light
and the porch light
accepts the worship
without deserving it

i have been the porch light too

no mouth and still the moth
pushes its whole self
toward the trembling
no prayer    just the body
moon-drunk and dew-heavy
mistaking every bright thing
for the one bright thing

who taught desire
to survive without a mouth?
who gave the green wing
its week and called it
a life?

the moth doesn't answer
the moth is already mating
against the screen door
in the almost-dark
spending what it cannot replenish
gorgeous    mouthless    burning

and i sit here
naming it
which is its own
small cruelty

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Thank you Poetry Outdoors for the prompt inspired by Mary Oliver’s poem, What Gorgeous Thing.

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