- Free Article: No
- Contents Category: Poem
- Custom Article Title: 'Moth', a new poem by Debi Hamilton
- Review Article: Yes
- Online Only: No
- Custom Highlight Text:
Digging in the garden I found a moth
albinoed on a piece of bark by the fence.
Those were my radiation days; it was good
to lay down the spade and kneel in the soil.
I took off my gloves. My fingernails were dirty,
my shoulder ached, the plants from the nursery
stood sentinel in their patient black pots.
I scooped the moth, laid it in my right hand.
But life must have just gone –
only the featherest movement, the colour
of milk, stirred something in me.
And the powder of those wings.
Behind me waited the spade, waited the plants.
The sun inched its shadows, the small black eye,
the folded segments now vacant.
I set the pale scrap where I had found it.
At night, Bach brings you back to me.
In the dark, I wish I had honoured you more.
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