The Moth On The Kitchen Wall

“Look,” Jon says and points to the brown moth on the yellow kitchen wall.  It’s wings, an awkward upside-down heart.

They are there every morning these days, most have soft brown wings with blocks of darker brown.

The moths are not always easy to catch.  They flutter away before I can reach my hand around them.  Or, once in my palm, they escape through the space between my curled fingers and thumb.

“I’ll bring a chair over, ” Jon says dragging a chair from the dining room table into the kitchen.

I step up onto the chair and cup my hand around the moth.  I feel the soft patter of wings then it settles inside my hand.

“That was easy,” I say.  I think that maybe I’m getting good at this.  Maybe the moths are beginning to trust me.

I open the front door, step outside, and open my hand.  The moth flies away.

There’s one more.  This one, burnt orange like the leaves in the pasture that grow low to the ground this time of year.

The orange moth also comes easily into my hand.  Now I think that maybe they are so agreeable because they are dying.

This moth doesn’t fly when I take it outside    I get a good look at its wings, and see the pink hue, white spots and gradation of color.

I think of Suzy’s shawls.

The way the colors meld together or are separated by a textured line,  those white spots like the locks that Suzy spins into her yarn.

The moth walks to the tips of my fingers and steps onto the lip of the blue flower pot on the back porch.

I take a picture, zooming in with my iPhone to see even more of its wonder.

Last year Jon would have squished the moth with a fly swatter the way I do flies and mosquitos.

I might not find it so easy to kill these other insects if they had wings like a handspun shawl.  And for all I know they might, since I’ve never taken the time to really see them.