Still Life: Moth on Windshield

By Paola R. Bruni

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As we pull onto the coast highway,
she comes. Alone. Alights on glass, 
robust in her dull flesh—plain as a Quaker.
What is velocity to the raw humping muscle
of abdomen, thorax? Or the eight gilded legs
that flatten against all odds to a pane of glass?
How we cling to what repels us!
Moth speak is a gibberish into wind,
her single bulging eye an alert periscope
watching me astonish at her herculean strength.
I want to be as earnest, fight for my life. 
But I am a lowly creature by comparison
fraught with bouts of uncertainty—
the anti-hero to moth’s brandishing 
courage. My husband pulls off at an exit. Offers 
cupped palms, the moth climbing onto the soft
pads of flesh as if entering a chariot. She
is transported to a clump of scotch broom
where she takes flight among yolk-yellow
blossoms. Only then does the symphony 
of white and black arrive, officers singing 
commands to freeze, raise hands over head. 
I try to explain about the bravery of a brown 
moth, how it earned its freedom,
but am ordered to remain inside the car,
where I can only guilt-anguish as my brown
husband is made into a still life: hands splayed
in white air, legs spread, head bowed 
in supplication. 

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Paola R. Bruni’s poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and has appeared in numerous print journals as well as popular anthologies. Recent poems can be found in The Birmingham Review, The Adroit Journal, and SWWIM Every Day. Her work is also forthcoming in Ploughshares, Five Points Journal, Red Wheelbarrow, and Spillway. Her debut book of poetry is an epistolary collection titled how do you spell the sound of crickets (Paper Angel Press, August 2022).

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