Some Things You Know Exactly

without being there.

A man was scared at a party, not by

strangers, not by the professors

who didn’t care to say hello,

but by a moth, which appeared

too large to his drunken, unfocused eyes.

They were on the porch, smoking, because,

after names and where-froms, politeness

seemed dull as the cheap beers

they had emptied.

A light bulb somewhere above them,

or so I was told.

Fucking moth, he said, fucking moth.

Always that kind of language, hung up

on a word or two, insisting on repetition

the way a frightened child curls underneath

his blankets, crying, Mother, mother.

It got quiet when he tried to kill the moth

with his cigarette

and failed once too many times.

There was amusement at first, then encouragement,

loss of interest, then silence, and finally

people waited for

It’s okay, man, let the thing live.

I was told he switched the light off, but not why.

The porch now naked in what little moonlight

there was. The people quieted down

without meaning to.

Maybe he thought the moth

would fly into the tip of his still-burning cigarette.

Maybe he kept stabbing the night air, aiming

at the faintest buzzes he heard.

Someone may have thought, That’s a man

writing a word—but which one?—in darkness.