Virginia’s Damn Moth

Let us postulate
Two powers, two principalities
Engaged in endless, insensate contest
Purposeless, goalless
Simple consequences from initial conditions

On this hand, life
Boiling, roiling, seething
Bursting into new paths
When another becomes resolutely blocked
Evolving new forms
Without preference, pragmatic
Impelled in the process
Midges teeming from a drying slough
Grasses sprouting in lava flows

On that hand, death
Staunch, resolute, adamant
Impeding, depleting,
Grasping with enormous, weighty hands
Dragging, exhausting
An insensate, clinging giant
Thoughtless, slow, entropic
Inured to forms
All alike like sputtering candles
In a damp and musty tomb

In this demonic trial
Everyone I know, everyone I love is
One of Virginia’s damn moths
Feeble but defiant
Collateral damage on the windowsill