Moth and Mother

by Niall Campbell

The night he cried himself into our bed,
I couldn’t find the clear road back to sleep
so went for water — filling the glass twice,
and felt that midnight thrill of being alive;

a clock ticked in the hall then in the bedroom —
and tick, there he was, and tick, there his mother;
and seeing them, I thought about the moth
flown back to lie beside its chrysalis,

both — dreaming and remembering the field
one housed and one flew in: its perfect night:
windless, but with a thousand tailwinds rising;
starless, but with a thousand points of light.