In the winter of 94-95, I lived at a very remote, off-the grid center for agroforestry in Belize. I was there to slow down, to stop being a workaholic, and try to figure out the rest of my life. (I also signed up to help with fundraising for the center, but that never panned out.) Just months before, I had quit a job running an international environmental network out of Ann Arbor, MI. And I was extremely confused and wounded and Belize called to me. So I went. I lived for most of three months there with others in a large thatched roof, open air lodge with no glass windows, screens or walls, practically, and bunkbeds on the 2nd floor. Once the day was over, candles or flashlights were how one read at night. And to not use up my batteries in the flashlight, candles were the best option. This being the tropics, all sorts of fantastic night flying insects flitted around and occasionally a moth came too close to the flame. Hence this poem… from 1995.
Oh Moth
Oh moth – you have waxed your wings
one last time in the candle I lit for
reading
But now I read
your pain
instead
Is this the cost
of my savoring a few more pages of tale
and you
no more flit
you sacrifice wing and flight
and life
What other deaths,
what other loss
to create that candle, that wick,
the flame
is this nothing
must there always be this cost and I
TAKE
Would it be better
for the costs of light to be
unknown distant
irradiated fish miles from
my lamp
poisoned mountains of coal tailings
so far that no one
watches seedlings struggle
and fail to take root
people and plants
fingerlings fried before ever being lifted
from a stream bed
massive river obstructions -
dammed
salmon crying in
frustration
as they try to leap,
to taste their home,
and spend a final spawn
in peace
should we not call it
the grid of unconscious,
a constricting net of electrical lines,
choking the biodiverse
to homogenize
the land
will we wake to life of living
web of connections and tugs at my heart
strings in this moment of you, oh moth, your death
in my light
I choose to close
my book for the toll
taken
Jan, 1995 (rev 11/09)
belize
mare cromwell
Tags: agroforestry, Belize, bunkbeds, candle, flashlight, moth, off-the-grid, Poem, remote, thatched roof, workaholic
