Today’s column features Richard Aldridge, a poet, anthologist and educator who lived on the Maine coast. In Aldridge’s poem, a moth becomes the source of thoughts about the unknown.

Moth at My Window

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Against my pane

He beats a rapid

Pitapat

In trying to reach

The desk lamp lit

In front of me.

Wing flurries spent,

He crawls and toils

This way and that,

His whole self bound

To pierce the veil

He cannot see.

The glance I turn

On him, light

Spreading still across

My page, is one

Of interest in

The company.

Whatever time

I take to watch

Will be no loss

From my own toils

To pierce the veil

I cannot see.