(let there be) light

Moths aren't built for artificial light,

which is why they slam their fragile, powdery bodies

against the white hot glass of my LED lantern autumn

nights when I read out on the porch.

.

They use the moon, the stars to orient themselves,

but in the face of a manufactured glow,

navigation becomes a death spiral.

As I watch, one flips and falls on its back on the splintered wood

railing, dazedly rising, fluttering, falling again

like a tattered kite in an oncoming storm.

.

Funny - I read through the night with this violence,

this confusion going on, seen and dismissed

out the corner of my eye. (then again,

maybe not so funny, but typical of the human creature,

which doesn't stop its drug-padded quest forward on a smooth,

mechanic track for anything: not a gunshot or siren

the next block over and not a body lying broken in the street.

If there's one thing we do, we keep on.

.

It's why we're still here,

held, mutating in the fluorescent glow

of the light we’ve harnessed.

We are apex predators, senseless killers

with our false moons draped along every highway,

beaming yolk-yellow and inviting through

open windows at night- a snare and not a road map,

a giant star fallen to earth that can easily,

and so capriciously, be put out

by a pair of soft hands.

.

And now I can’t help but wonder-

was our taming of electricity the beginning of a doomed world,

a death spiral of our own, a dysthymic un-syncing, bluetooth

unpaired from the natural earth and its rhythms?

Are we now only waiting

for the day we circle too close to the blue light of

our own inventions, bursting like the remnants

of autumn leaves in the fury of all that captured

light?