This moth caught in the room tonight

Squirmed up, sniper-style, between

The rusty edges of the screen;

Then, long as the room stayed light,

Lay here, content, in some cornerhole.

Now that we’ve settled into bed

Though, he can’t sleep. Overhead,

he hurls himself at the blank wall.

Each night hordes of these flutterers haunt

And climb my study windowpane;

Fired by reflection, their insane

Eyes gleam; they know what they want.

How do the petulant things survive?

Out in the fields they have a place

And proper work, furthering the race;

Why this blind fanatical drive

Indoors? Why rush at every spark,

Cigar, headlamp or railway warning

To knock off your wings and starve by morning?

And what could a moth fear in the dark

Compared with what you meet inside?

Still, he rams the fluorescent face

Of the clock, thinks that’s another place

Of light and families, where he’ll hide.

We’d ought to trap him in a jar,

Or come, like the white-coats, with a net

And turn him out toward living. Yet

We don’t; we take things as they are.