Yesterday’s Traveler

Robert Allen

March 19, 2023

A giant silk moth, blown way off course,

clung to the brick on the side of our house.

Chilled, we thought, wings folded, motionless.

The day was cool, unlike the day before.

More common in the Pacific Northwest,

my son determined from the internet.

Male, by the antennae, and travel-worn

compared to other pictures he had found.

We stood together, wanting it to move

so we could look at those distinctive eyes.

What would it do? Fly away? Disappear?

I nudged it and it fell flat to the ground.

There they were, those round eyes staring back.

My son picked up the weary traveler

and held it in his soft, warm hands. Its wings

began to flutter, and the moth took off

toward the neighbor’s towering oak, then flew

over our heads, nearly touching our roof,

and landed on a smaller oak of ours,

blending nicely with the trunk’s rough bark.

I moved to take another photograph.

Before I stopped, I had a baker’s dozen.

A moment passed; it flew across the street.

I lost it in a hedge, and I was changed.

Today I think of the journey it took,

crossing forests, the Rockies, and the wide

expanse of Texas to get to my doorstep,

covering half a continent to find me.

Is it strange to ask why? Is nature somehow

in love with me? Am I in love with it?

With all the grief and unrest in the world,

could I be wrong to contemplate its beauty?

photograph by Robert Allen

ROBERT ALLEN is retired and lives in San Antonio with his wife, two children, five antique clocks, and four cats. He has poems in Voices de la Luna, the 2023 Texas Poetry Calendar, and TPA. He loves cardio-boxing workouts, hates to throw things away, and facilitates Gemini Ink's in-person Open Writer's Lab.