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Picture 10940980, illustration in The Naturalist's Pocket Magazine; or, Complete Cabinet of the Curiosities and Beauties of Nature (1798-1802), image copyright Mary Evans / Florilegius

Ghost Moth
by Geraldine Mitchell

 

Hepialus humuli

 

 

Its wings leave smudges on

the windowpane, thin dust rising

as it butts the glass, the moon

behind it and my lamp within.

I have been thinking too much

 

of my mother, gone these twenty years,

imagine she’s come back to visit me.

What is it you want? Aren’t you dead

long enough to leave me now,

to take your rest? I turn

 

the light out, watch the creature

crawl, pause, crawl – looking,

looking where to go next. I lie

and let it watch me too, wait

to see who’s first to blink.

 

I think of her old coat

that smelled of comfort, dust and

Sundays – grey fur sleek as moonstone,

downy as the small grey hen

this morning at the market. I perch

 

restless on a varnished pew,

my cheek afloat on her sleeve,

listen for the sky’s deep breath, hear

the hiccupping sea pour bucket-

fuls of water on the shore.

 

 

© Geraldine Mitchell, in Mountains for Breakfast (Arlen House, 2017)

Picture 10940980, illustration in The Naturalist’s Pocket Magazine; or, Complete Cabinet of the Curiosities and Beauties of Nature (1798-1802), image copyright Mary Evans / Florilegius

 

 

Irish poet Geraldine Mitchell has published four collections: World Without Maps (2011), Of Birds and Bones (2014), Mountains for Breakfast (2017) and, most recently, Mute/Unmute (2020). She is published by Arlen House. Geraldine won the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award in 2008 and was the overall winner in the inaugural Trócaire-Poetry Ireland poetry competition in 2012. Most recently, she was placed second in the 2021 Troubadour International Poetry Prize. Widely published in journals in Ireland and the UK, she has also frequently been broadcast on RTÉ radio and appeared in The Irish Times and The Examiner newspapers. Having worked for many years in France and Spain, she now lives on the Co. Mayo coast. www.geraldinemitchell.net

 

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