Softness

brushed my fingers this morning,

as I put out the shopfront sign.

I looked;

a pair of appleseed eyes stared back

from their fuzz bed of grey paper –

a moth,

an unnoticed guest staying over from the night,

now narrowly missed by my blind, bumbling thumb –

but lucky,

and so still alive. There it sat, staring out

at the world’s huge unfamiliar illumination,

not blinking,

not moving. And perhaps, in the tiny mind beneath those wings,

the ecstasy of candlefire multiplied

a million million times and exploded into

a vision

of celestial glories, of primal mystery,

of the awful, unveiled face of the divine,

and perhaps

in that moment – as I carried the signboard into brightness –

that faded remnant speck of night

longed only

to be dissolved into the day, blent into hosannas of radiance,

and burned, a mote consumed in the searing ecstasy of inward flame

there, on the easel,

beside my clumsy fingertip.

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