Poems Near and Far

Adventures with Moths and the Sun

Today I have two very different poems—different in perspective as well as format.

The first is this sonnet, a view from close at hand. The moths have an incessant interest in our glass-paned back door. Hence this poem.

Rescue

You little moths that slip inside the door,
lured in by lamps at night or the cool glass
of day–unwitting how the dangers mass
against your spinning wings, which now would soar
again into free air.  I come before
you flicker into cobwebs here, alas!
or buffet wings in fruitless search to pass
beyond the panes–I come to you, implore
you trust me as I cup my hopeful hand
above your furred antennae or beside
your whirring wings.  You dodge and dart and land
eventually on finger’s side; you ride
with tiny feet I scarcely feel, wings fanned
as door at last tugs free and off you glide!

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This second poem is looking from a much longer distance, and using a much older form than the sonnet.

I am no master of the Old English poetic forms, but I do love to work with them from time to time. It seemed fitting to apply this technique to the great forge-master…

Forge-Master

Here the sun, heavy of hand,
hammers ever the earth-anvil.
Ruddy his face and his fingers, he finishes
his day’s labor, looking, leaning
ever downward, always earthward.
Molten and molded, melded the many
soils beneath the burning blaze
of his labors long, until lastly he lingers
one slow hour.  The smolder ceases;
the smithy’s smoke sinters to stillness;
the clouds cluster, cooling and calming.
The gold glows ever more gleaming
across the horizon heavy with hours.
The day-embers darken and dull;
the earth-forge flickers and fades.
The mountain-maker marks his path
homeward, silently; the heated hearth
falls chill as the raven rises to rest,
while owls waken, winging their way
with horns to the hunt, through heavy hours
in the still smithy, while the sun slumbers.

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