Luna Moth
 
South from Chicago I pass men working under lights,
silhouettes in the mist of their jackhammers. Some instinct
to pray for their safety addles even miles away
as I turn into a gas station. Waiting for the chug
and clunk of the nozzle to cease, I notice the pumps are topped
with planters sprouting plastic vines, leaves speckled with
acrylic dew. One leaf seems to have fallen against
the curb, but there is something in the living that makes us
recognize one another—a phenomenon I once heard
called biophilia, our innate love of regarding
that which is alive. This concept explains koi ponds,
bird watching, and how much I loved looking at you
even in the absence of touch. Or it explains nothing--
after all it can’t tell me why I want to carry the moth
from the concrete to the grass or my fear of touching her,
why her battering, though feeble, makes me start
and draw back. When I lift her, she clings to my fingers
with brown legs seamed in fur and I think I look
into a wise and mournful face, rather than
an evolutionary trick of camouflage.
 
I set her down beyond the glare and she lifts her wings
making a little steeple then lets them fall. They are pale
and downy, tapering into streamers that furl away
from her snowy body. She must be at the end of her life
and may just struggle back to the station’s glare,
but what can I do? How strange to praise the dust
she scattered on my palms and stranger to still to praise
the jackhammer mist set alit, trailing in a darkening sky.