MindSpinner

I heard about snow from someone who walked in it yesterday and found the tracks of all his neighbors the animals. I close my eyes now and picture tracks in snow - bird tracks, rabbit tracks, deer tracks. My neighbors the animals make tracks here, too, in the sodden grass, but not ones I can see. We haven’t had snow to speak of this winter, no more than the powdered sugar that tops a cookie.

Outside, night is already black at just after 8:00, but I see a moth fluttering at the window, an early moth, out of season, who would wish for the warmth inside as well as the light shining above my kitchen table if only it knew the heady brew of summer suns. It will beat its wings against the glass alone, without the hum of cicadas to cheer it on or a company of winged fellows to jockey for space at the window; it will live and perish in a cold world without flowers or mate. But still it flutters, for what else is there to do if you are a moth mistakenly born in winter? There is not even a spider this time of year to weave a web to snare it and make an end.

If I could speak some mothen language, I would tell the winter moth that it was not for this season that moths were made. I would conjure for it blooms and nectars, dew on grass at sunrise and June at noon. The moth, in soundless reply, flails a message - white wings on a page of black: timing is everything.