Moth Stream by Gary Every

The moon shines through my window at midnight
as I toss and turn, unable to sleep
but I am capable of dreaming plenty.
It is not the moon which keeps me awake
nor even the wind
which rattles the leaves in the trees
and shakes my window frame.
It is knowledge which gives me insomnia.
I have recently learned something startling.
Moths, tiny soft fuzzy winged insects,
can somehow sense the direction of the wind
and as the seasons change
so that the moths feel the need to migrate,
all the moths at once,
elevate a mile or two into the sky
where the breeze tosses the tiny airborne creatures
in the direction they wish to go,
hurling them swiftly,
as fast as sixty miles an hour.
How extraordinary it must be
to be so tiny and be flung so fast
and so far.
Do the moths have any grasp
of the massive geography they cover so quickly?
Outside my window nighttime flowers bloom,
trumpeting datura and white yuccas flickering atop their stalks
like candle flames,
beckoning for the moths to drop from the sky.
I lie awake at night unable to sleep
trying to imagine millions of moths
two miles above my bed
soaring through the air at sixty miles an hour,
cursed with insomnia
caught up in a streaming dream of moths.

Gary Every, Arizona, USA