They surely care more about the moths that flutter in its light. And how the moths danced tonight, torn between bright moon and the brighter porch light. Their wings shimmered with both as they fluttered about and made the cats leap. I saw none of them caught, though, and after sitting half an hour on the porch I returned indoors.
Outside, the cats are still watching those moths who are confused by the competing lights. Here, the light of the computer monitor washes over me, but the light of the television beckons. Portia is watching me. I'm sure she wants me to leave the desk and make a roomy lap for her on the couch. Once I've moved she will make her leap. Her lap time is a sure thing, but the feral cats won't necessarily get their moths. Still, I wonder which has the better deal?
Sunday Verse
Motion Sickness
by B. H. Fairchild
I am tired of the heave and swell,
the deep lunge in the belly, the gut's
dumb show of dance and counterdance,
sway and pause, the pure jig of nausea
in the pit of a spinning world.
Where the body moves, the mind
often lags, clutching deck, anchor,
the gray strap that hangs like the beard
of death from the train's ceiling,
the mind lost in the slow bulge
of ocean under the moon's long pull
or the endless coil of some medieval
argument for the existence of God
or the dream of the giant maze
that turns constantly in and in
on itself and there is no way out . . .
I am sick and tired of every rise and fall
of the sun, the moon's tedious cycle
that sucks blood from the thighs of women
and turns teenage boys into wolves
prowling the streets, hungry for motion.
Let me be still, let me rest
in some hollow of space and time
far from the seasons and that boring,
ponderous drama of day and night.
Let me sleep in the heart of calm
and dream placidly of birds frozen
in the unmoving air of eternity
and the earth grown immobile
in its centrifugal spin, and God
motionless as Lazarus in his tomb
before he is raised dizzily
to fall again, to rise, to fall.