Barbara Ellen Sorensen

Barbara Sorenson

Moth Art

Small moth
pressed between
a manila file folder
and several loose pages of poetry.

Flattened transfiguration
of wings
cover poem words:
ice,
light.

No sign of pulp,
in its arrested whorl,
just the quiet smalt
I brush my hand across,

feeling blue-fanned ashes
between fingers
no better than assassins,
the silken pleasure
of body-charcoal smudging the page,
adding landscape,
sky.