Tonight the air smells of cut grass.
Apples rust on the branches. Already summer is
a place mislaid between expectation and memory.
This has been a summer of moths.
Their moment of truth comes well after dark.
Then they reveal themselves at our window-
ledges and sills as a pinpoint. A glimmer.
The books I look up about them are full of legends:
Ghost-swift moths with their dancing assemblies at dusk.
Their courtship swarms. How some kinds may steer by
the moon.
The moon is up. The black windows are wide open.
Mid-July light fills the neighbourhood. I stand by the
hedge.
Once again they are near the windowsill--
fluttering past the fuchsia and the lavender,
which is knee-high, and too blue to warn them
they will fall down without knowing how
or why what they steered by became, suddenly,
what they crackled and burned around. They will perish--
I am perishing--on the edge and at the threshold of
the moment all nature fears and tends towards:
The stealing of the light. Ingenious facsimile.
And the kitchen bulb which beckons them makes
My child's shadow longer than my own.
Apples rust on the branches. Already summer is
a place mislaid between expectation and memory.
This has been a summer of moths.
Their moment of truth comes well after dark.
Then they reveal themselves at our window-
ledges and sills as a pinpoint. A glimmer.
The books I look up about them are full of legends:
Ghost-swift moths with their dancing assemblies at dusk.
Their courtship swarms. How some kinds may steer by
the moon.
The moon is up. The black windows are wide open.
Mid-July light fills the neighbourhood. I stand by the
hedge.
Once again they are near the windowsill--
fluttering past the fuchsia and the lavender,
which is knee-high, and too blue to warn them
they will fall down without knowing how
or why what they steered by became, suddenly,
what they crackled and burned around. They will perish--
I am perishing--on the edge and at the threshold of
the moment all nature fears and tends towards:
The stealing of the light. Ingenious facsimile.
And the kitchen bulb which beckons them makes
My child's shadow longer than my own.
["Moths", Eavan Boland]
I've just discovered Eavan Boland, and am on that delicious first reading of a book of poetry: feeling the language and rhythms and images without too much intellectual probing, intuiting the meanings.
I can't wait to go back and read through it again, this time word by word, line by line, section by section, pen viscerally in hand.
I can't wait to apply what I've read, to reach the point where the words have been absorbed into my psyche and into my heart, have become channels through which new thoughts and emotions can pour.
I delight in the knowledge that when I've exhausted all these steps, I can start all over again on the same book and emerge with new channels carved into my soul, old channels deepened and broadened.
Joy, joy, joy. I'm off to read some more.
I've just discovered Eavan Boland, and am on that delicious first reading of a book of poetry: feeling the language and rhythms and images without too much intellectual probing, intuiting the meanings.
I can't wait to go back and read through it again, this time word by word, line by line, section by section, pen viscerally in hand.
I can't wait to apply what I've read, to reach the point where the words have been absorbed into my psyche and into my heart, have become channels through which new thoughts and emotions can pour.
I delight in the knowledge that when I've exhausted all these steps, I can start all over again on the same book and emerge with new channels carved into my soul, old channels deepened and broadened.
Joy, joy, joy. I'm off to read some more.
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