Death’s Head Moth
The effect is to produce the most superstitious feelings among the uneducated, by whom it is always regarded with feelings of awe and terror.
‘The Death’s-Head Hawk-Moth’, in Edward Newman’s An Illustrated Natural History of British Moths (1869)
I commune with her on the third night,
her voice a barefoot creak on floorboards,
the betrayal of splintering twigs at the forest’s
edge. She lifts the trapdoor of her wings
as if in response to a charm –
the candlelight flares, reveals the long throat
of spiral stairs, and I run my palm against
the stone’s chilled perspiration, descending
into the underworld revealed.
I will surely find bones.
I stray nearer on the third night, flit above her face
to fan her brow, easing the fever that summons
fitful dreams. I settle in the stiff-backed chair
by her bedside, a nursemaid cradling her charge
in the folds of her own body as she sleeps. And now
I will hum in the softness of the dawn, lead her to the
end of sleep’s protracted passage. The low vibrations
of my song pass through the skull upon my back,
echoing consolations through its hollows,
blowing out the flame.
Catherine Redford lives in Worcestershire. She started writing poetry after being widowed at the age of 35. She has poems published/forthcoming in Under the Radar, The Storms, New Welsh Reader, Lighthouse, Black Bough, Atrium, and Alchemy Spoon. You can find her on Twitter: @C_Redford_ and Instagram @catherine_redford