Winter Moths
In this pallid coastal season,
the firs drip and the sun cowers.
Anoraked, we walk
the drab penumbral chill:
the gravelled road creaks and fades
through charcoal, rough linens,
shades of greying hair.
But as we peer and probe like omnivores
at lichens clasped to weathered limbs,
gutted nuts and eaten leaves,
our gum boots wade
through flights of
winter moths:
warm snowflakes
in dead December,
ashen as shed bark,
dark as tree bones,
fleeing larval hunger.
Charles Harper
Yokohama, Japan