The moon not yet up, we forage in near darkness,
out back in the woods, the wet spot to the north,
where they grow in clumps, bunched like fists,
and push their first wound heads through earth in spring,
after crocuses, before the lilacs.
Our fingers shoved into the damp cold, probing
for that familiar curved ridge, just as the fern crowns,
its delicate future packed like green lace
into a groove in the rolled stem.
Best to pick them now, when the heads are tightest,
when the land’s a half-lit silhouette, when
we can see each other’s breath and all it takes
is a quick snap to hold tomorrow in your hand
and feel its paper-thin sheathing.
Sphinx Moth
Sometimes you have to wait
for the present, until here it is:
a dusky-winged trembling
floating among the white lilies—
hovering, sipping, exchanging
life for life. As if all memory
of its earthbound days was lost.
As if its former voracious
green hunger was a dream
we dreamt and not the moth’s.