ETERNAL YET

GYROVAGUE

Fear lurks at my gate like a gyrovague,

Its begging bowl clogged with failure's bones,

Lisping its warning never to change,

Unstable as night mist's shifting tones.

It cries for alms in the dead of day,

It tolls the hours with cowled skull bowed,

Its habit frayed where the shame shows through,

Mulls over misstep and untrod road.

If I turn the key, it will knock and knock,

So I lend it a seat in my circle of bliss;

Having seen it hollow, I now sleep safe,

In the stillness of light where no dread is.

MOTHING MOTTEPHOBIC

Small Dusty Wave (Idaea seriata)

Mottephobia: the irrational fear of moths.

My phobia of moths goes way back, to this childhood incident.

Now I'm working on overcoming my mottephobia through my camera lens. Through curiosity. Through my stubborn determination  to refuse to be deprived of moths in my life forever more.

This summer, I'm even starting to do mothy things with sheets, torches, sugaring and wine ropes I never ever dreamed I could steel myself to do. Even opening a window with the lights on in the evening has been a no-no for most of my life!

The following poem squeezed its way out on such an evening of lying in wait for the whisper of wings.

Female Bee Moth (Aphomia sociella)

Let's sit suspended in this burning dark
Moths mutter and barge in watch-spring arc
Kidnapped wings
From nectareous things
Sheets running rivers of fluttering light
Retina flexes to flatten night.

Still heart-deep primal phobia
Shrieks headless panic under buddleia
I tense transfixed, pinned corpse on card
In the melting dusk of my own backyard
They blunder through gaps 
Between stratus and star
To the flames of our fears 
To wherever we are.

White-shouldered House Moth (Endrosis sarcitrella)