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This poem is taken from PN Review 53, Volume 13 Number 3, January - February 1987.

Two Poems Lauris Edmond

The Ghost Moth

Once we lived so close to the bush
each day wore the beech trees' rangy profile,
all night the creek purred brushing
the antennae of our sleep; in the evening
moths came pouring into the lamplight
some small, blue-sheened, as though it was
light itself combed to dust on their wings

or a ghost moth stared from a doorway
sheathed in its gentle shallow gaze;
and we ourselves seemed diffused, like
the light, and would wander away
past the moths to the leaf-shivering trees
as though summoned in secret
by the morepork's comfortless cry.

That earthy unearthly life is over now
...


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