It’s not trash I see, walking west

along the road behind my house—it’s just neon green light

and then it coalesces into a feeler, larval

—look down and there you are—
silk-wrapped, your body drummed inside the dusk


But how did you rise in afternoon, mid-June
night-moth, voiceless, eyespots blind

so whenever I grieve the defeat of the forest
you in your cocoon subside to sleep in the leaf litter

while blue light expands above the river in December

somehow I know the texture, the sycamore of your overwinter
and the way you shake your numb wings awake

Rattle of cans, dry asphalt, roadside weeds
daylight arrives like suffering coming into relief

Bless the echolocators, the oilbirds and swiftlets, bless even the bats
who’d shred your hind-wing jades and sages—

so we can witness the night dances, how you
troll spring currents for a mate—

so we witness the end and the beginning as you irradiate the darkness