The Night is Full of Moths
The lizard stays,
pressed against the wall,
a green slit in the hush of evening.
The porch light hums,
spilling its yellow promise.
Above, the moth flutters,
soft-winged, full of wrong dreams.
It mistakes this glow for the moon,
a place to rest, a home.
It does not see hunger
curled tight, waiting.
The lizard knows waiting.
Knows the slow measure of time,
the weight of a body
holding still until stillness
becomes something else.
The moth wavers—
a whisper of wings,
a hesitation in flight.
It does not know what watches.
It does not know
how light can be a trap.
Then—
a flicker of tongue,
a snap of air.
But the lizard has missed.
The moth stumbles,
dizzy, lost,
then lifts—
a slip of shadow,
a breath on the wind,
already forgetting.
The lizard watches it go,
then shifts, slow, deliberate.
It knows another will come,
another chance will rise
from the dark.
The night is full of moths,
full of moments.
Some lost.
Some taken.
All passing through.
For the Child Who Won’t Remember
The afternoon spills through the curtains,
thin as gauze, golden as dust—
a hush of light, a moment held still
in the cradle of time.
You—small, soft, and new—
sit in the ease of a world
where memory has not yet settled,
where the days are not counted,
only gathered in the palm of your hand.
Your fingers roam the grain of the table,
tiny tracings of a language
you do not yet speak.
You follow the drifting hush of motes,
watch the spill of light bend,
and in your silence, the world hums.
I watch you—
unburdened, unknowing,
whole in the moment that holds you.
Time does not press its weight against you,
does not ask for anything but your wonder.
And I, on the other side of remembering,
wonder how long it will be
before you learn that time
is a thing that moves even when
we are not looking.
Will you remember this—
the hush, the warmth,
the way your fingers fit
against the smooth of wood?
Or will it slip from you,
as childhood does,
as moments do—
leaving only the echo
of something soft and fleeting?
But I will remember.
I will keep this moment for you,
press it between pages,
fold it into breath,
into a song half-hummed in the distance.
And maybe that is enough—
to hold what you cannot,
to gather what will one day scatter,
to keep for you
what you have not yet learned to lose.
ROGER B. RUEDA moves between worlds—the deliberate precision of grammar and the quiet intensity of verse. He is the author of A Plain & Practically Lucid English Grammar and Vines and Verges: Short Stories, works that hold language up to the light, inspecting its contours with care. His essays and poems have wandered into Home Life, Philippines Graphic, Philippine Panorama, and The Sunday Times, while his poetry finds a tender permanence in anthologies such as Mantala 3 Under the Storm: An Anthology of Philippine Contemporary Poetry and Verses Typhoon Yolanda: A Storm of Filipino Poets.
Visit Roger B. Rueda at http://www.rogerbrueda.blogspot.com.
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