Musty Light

28.07.10

Dream-grey afternoon in the ballroom of a French colonial mansion
turned library. I sit in dim cloud-light, draped in musty silence,
feet on marble-cool floor, hemmed in by knowledge—termite-riddled,
reposing in the hall’s glooming arms; snatches of wisdom tucked into its long-frayed sleeves—

drowsing over a book, fingers slow-slipping through my hair, ‘til suddenly
a moth—and my heart—flutter up in sleepy surprise.
It had been napping in my hair, the moth. Having flickered
out of dark corners of history, of adventure perhaps, and settled,
still sleepy, in the fragrant-flowing dampness of my washed hair.

A moth in my hair? —I panic. Perpetually afraid of growing into a mouldy derelict, scarfed
with a sleepy whiff of history, perfumed with shadows of oblivion
for a ghost moth to haunt. . .
No. Perhaps it mistook the gloom for nightfall, venturing out to the sole tender light in the hall?
Glimmering insight of a youthful mind?

Light of wisdom comes to age, they say; as do moths.
Couldn’t the glow of infant wisdom draw moths and age, I wonder?
But it’s sombre here, and musty; stray thoughts too dreamy to mean.