Caught

A moth’s tetrapterous body is impaled—
as if by the pins of its eyes—

on the green screen door of my kitchen.
The powdered edges of its wings

pulsate with the calm of death
upon the faint extinction of its breath.

It is early fall, the air paper-thin
as if it could tear. I can’t tell apart

the squares of mesh from the moth’s
nacreous skin. My mind tries

to capture this scene in luminous words
and turn this ordinary door

that needs a coat of paint and a new knob
into relic or shrine.

Then the barest flutter of pensive,
passive rage trembles through the moth’s

caviling frame. It dies so young, so
surely, and it has no name.

Now I’m awake it dies, and as I slept
last night, its life had just begun.

Published on Poetry Breakfast