Today's poem is by Traci Brimhall

A Group of Moths
       

is called a whisper, all those Xerxes flexing
blue apexes on the hush of a poppy's lip until
silence ushers them into a quieter fog. A group

of extinctions is called a grief or that one April,
our Kansas houses coated in dark wings, flutters
rushing down every chimney like sinking smoke.

Farmers say a group of miller moths is an infestation,
but dusted in fallen flour we spread the dead with
tweezers and call them a lesson, an aerial parade

of our missing. Some say a group of moths is called
an eclipse, and a group of eclipses is what I decide
to call a pandemic, suns shuttered like camera lenses.

Oh all the weeping behind walls before windows open
and the singing begins. But still others say a group
of moths is called a universe, each microscopic scale

the color of an exoplanet or dwarf star gathered into
a flight. A group of universes is called a family fever
or a dredge of lexicographers might say it is called

a worry, parents rocking to nocturnes of sonorous
moths, cupping a palm over a sleeping child's mouth
to feel the flame of breath gutter but keep burning.

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Copyright © 2024 Traci Brimhall All rights reserved
from Copper Nickel
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission