SHELAGH ROWAN-LEGG

Moths are older than dinosaurs, and often only live a few days

You must always be drunk - Charles Baudelaire


Their secret: they turn
everything they consume
to alcohol. Or
more precisely,

just enough to fly
in that solitude 
that sees any light
as solace and succour.

This is how they have
outsmarted meteors,
deluges, droughts.
They can always find

bark or wool,
blood or fungus,
to make the moth’s
equivalent of a thimbleful,

enough to give them
cadence and swagger
to dodge proverbial
bullets of extinction.

Tipsy-swayed, survival
through brazen insouciance
for nothing but some
insistent illumination.