by Andrew C. Feindt

What does the wandering moth wonder

fluttering about the Trenton platform,

escaped from the silver box

that swept it so far

from the bowels of Penn Station?

When the conductors yell all clear,

shut the train down for its shallow night’s sleep,

do the street lights opposite the platform

lose a partner in conversation

mid hum?

Is the dying breath

of the train’s interior illumination

what the moth carries to the street lamps

across the empty platform

when the electric tracks stop singing?

Why is the moth so angry?

Is the lamp not listening,

or is the moth using hard-headed repetition

to remember the relay to the train cars

before sunlight signals the lamp’s extinction?

How long is the moth’s memory? Until daylight?

How does it resist being distracted

by a conversation with the sun?

How many moths, in dawn, are lost

to incinerate the horizon, trying?

Andrew C. Feindt (“Ink”) is a central New Jersey author who appears irregularly and without warning in various spots throughout the NY/NJ/PA area and even more sporadically in literary journals and magazines throughout the world. Read more of his work online at

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