by Andrew C. Feindt
What does the wandering moth wonder
fluttering about the Trenton platform,
escaped from the silver box
that swept it so far
from the bowels of Penn Station?
When the conductors yell all clear,
shut the train down for its shallow night’s sleep,
do the street lights opposite the platform
lose a partner in conversation
mid hum?
Is the dying breath
of the train’s interior illumination
what the moth carries to the street lamps
across the empty platform
when the electric tracks stop singing?
Why is the moth so angry?
Is the lamp not listening,
or is the moth using hard-headed repetition
to remember the relay to the train cars
before sunlight signals the lamp’s extinction?
How long is the moth’s memory? Until daylight?
How does it resist being distracted
by a conversation with the sun?
How many moths, in dawn, are lost
to incinerate the horizon, trying?
Andrew C. Feindt (“Ink”) is a central New Jersey author who appears irregularly and without warning in various spots throughout the NY/NJ/PA area and even more sporadically in literary journals and magazines throughout the world. Read more of his work online at www.inksblot.com.
