Winter Moths

Among stripped colonnades
of elms and oaks
they floated, lifted, drifted,
grey soft glints,
fluttering wings of ash.
We stepped from your car
into late November, mildly chill.
We'd been to dinner, a play.
The quiet drive to your house
on quiet roads.
Inside, under a mere quilt,
we made love, careful, rumpled,
middle-age love, and dozed.
Outside the moths wove
in and out of branches,
all the waiting in the underdark done,
all that hunger
rising thin and brief.
I left you past midnight,

found dozens
stuck to my front door,
their beating slowed,
their fringed wings settled, soundless,
parching in the porch light,
as if they agreed
there was nothing left to try,
all they knew,
all their ghostly urgency
waning into someone else's dawn.