a poem by Laura Stamps
At the local print shop a Great Leopard
Moth rests in a cardboard box the last
week of October, discovered on a tuft
of grass outside the store, fluttering
silently through the flowered fields of
eternal sleep, its ivory wings spread
like a regal robe peppered with the
inked spots of a snow leopard. Every
morning Daisy dozes beneath the leafy
skirt of a scrub oak next to the food
bowls, waiting for breakfast, quickened
the moment the lock clicks on the
sliding glass door, while the kittens’
mother crouches on a porch step or
beneath the shed, anxious for yogurt
now that she nurses a new litter, her
belly sagging with milk shining as
white as the creamy wings of a moth
named for another cat of the wild.
