Luna Moth Circuses Cloud The Skies Poem by Mary Angela Douglas

luna moth circuses cloud the skies
in buttered moonlight; in the indigo, violet
nights when you with your dream eyes
flicker in dreams and are mothlike too
when the stray light from no known source
crosses you, no black cat.
don't tell me what I've seen
I know myself about that
and I remember everything
the shimmering apples in the basement stored
from all the folklore we ever read
from the green and red, the sweet pandemonium of our
earliest Christmases to the ghost stories
on the moors, the dust on wings of uncertain origin
that sparkles even in dimmest light, pale emerald
when by that most precious prescient Star
we are led aright to Bethlehem and
the flights we have no names for yet
in any daylight language.

mary angela douglas 16 march 2023