Thirteen Ways of Looking at the White Moth at My Window

I
The white moth was
A cloud fluttering
In the cloudless blue sky.

II
It was a trick of sheltered mind,
My thinking the white moth
Trapped on the inside.

III
The white moth bobbed along in the spring breeze,
A tiny blossom loosed of its stem.

IV
An onion skin and a garlic peel
Are one.
An onion skin and a garlic peel and a white moth’s wings
Are one.

V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of ambiguity,
Or the beauty of allusions,
The swooshing of the white moth’s wings.
Or just after.

VI
Hail coated the wide window
Into frosted glass.
The shadow of the white moth
Paced it, up and down.
The ambience
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable verse.

VII
O tourists of Cape Meares,
Why do you imagine Grey Whales?
Do you not see how the white moth
Hovers above the heads
Of the children with you?

VIII
I know quiet melodies
And anguished, irrefutable notes;
But I know, too,
That the white moth is crucial
To what I know.

IX
When the white moth flew out of sight,
It erased the boundary
Of my narrowed vision.

X
At the sight of the white moth
Soaring in the haloed twilight,
Any songstress
Would hold her breath.

XI
He flew to Massachusetts
In a jet plane.
Once, overtaken by dread,
In that he hallucinated
The exhaust from the engines
As white moths.

XII
The moon is rising.
The white moth must be flying.

XIII
It was morning all night.
It was raining
And it was going to rain.
The white moth flitted
Around the porch light.