SketchyGrrl

August First

 Hayden Carruth

Late night on the porch, thinking

of old poems. Another day’s

work, another evening’s,

done. A large moth, probably

Catocala, batters the screen,

but lazily, its strength spent,

its wings tattered. It perches

trembling on the sill. The sky

is hot dark summer, neither

moon nor stars, air unstirring,

darkness complete; and the brook

sounds low, a discourse fumbling

among obstinate stones. I

remember a poem I wrote

years ago when my wife and

I had been married twenty-

two days, an exuberant

poem of love, death, the white

snow, personal purity. now

I look without seeing at

a geranium on the sill;

and, still full of day and evening,

of what to do for money,

I wonder what became of

purity. The world is a

complex fatigue. The moth tries

once more, wavering desperately

up the screen, beating, insane,

behind the geranium. It is an

immense geranium,

the biggest I’ve ever seen,

with a stem like a small tree

branching, so that the two thick arms

rise against the blackness of

this summer sky, and hold up

ten blossom clusters, bright bursts

of color. What is it —- coral,

mallow? Isn’t there a color

called “geranium”? No matter.

They are clusters of richness

held against the night in quiet

exultation, five on each branch,

upraised. I bought it myself

and gave it to my young wife

years ago, in a plastic cup

with a 19cent seedling

from the supermarket, now

so thick, leathery-stemmed,

and bountiful with blossom.

The moth rests again, clinging.

The brook talks. The night listens.