A moth, rich with detail as a Dürer engraving,
is trapped in the house, weak
from batting windows.
Ash gray with shocked
mahogany eyespots,
the wings sag from exhaustion,
twitch once as my hands
close over them, and relent,
settle to any doom
in the warm vault of capture.
The wings brush my palms like eyelashes.
Thrown from the dim room
to raw noon sun,
the moth loops and staggers
in jagged, drunken orbits,
until it finds a shaded crevice
for shelter from the harsh mercy
of rescue, tilting through
this vertigo of color,
this chaos of brightness,
blinded from sifter of dark
to a throbbing eye by that instant,
salt-white scouring we all desire and dread,
the shine of a day
when even the dark will burn.