Love in the Age of Global Warming
It was moth hour, time when all moths
should’ve fastened sleep in their makeshift
shelters of bark and shadows, in the cooled
and secret regions where spring hides
paralyzed in ice.
Breeding a vacant planet, the corrupted
reflections of angels find nothing
but each other, thus the invisible ecstasy of moths
flirting and coupling on a winter’s night.
Their sonar songs beyond our frequencies,
our sonnets and symphonies, reach
whose ears, my darling. We who find
each other that the moths,
our familiars in love and flight,
launch into a false spring cast by fools.
(From Questions for the Sphinx, WordTech Editions. Stuart Bartow teaches at SUNY Adirondack and chairs the Battenkill Conservancy.)
