April Fools’ Day isn’t usually my kind of folklore. Even just a hint that there is any sort of trickery going on, and I tend to wait it out, eyes ready to roll. This time, I decided to be a bit playful and go with whatever comes. It’s foolishness–if I don’t like it later, it doesn’t count.

After all, who makes the rules around here? No idea. Isn’t me! I might be taking some serious chances here!

You might be able to tell that I have been reading Borges:

1 April 2021

1

Present at Your Own Conception

–by the author of the lyric ‘Luna Moth’–

Tightly curled leaf on the floor of the forest,

the creature within has escaped. Is that good?

Where will it shelter, alone with a bare mortal

skin and no blanket in all this vast wood?

High overhead, by the light of the lunar

and stellar design that winds round to an end

in the eyes of the one crying now–who was soonest

to sorrow, but also to comfort–a friend

to the patiently ministering angel then sleeping

tucked warmly away in a room of its own.

Maybe tonight when the hail and the freezing

night rain stream away and a strange, fragrant zone

enters here, where you breathe, and it tells you it’s sorry–

sorry you waited so long–but its vain

meanderings ceased in a strange dream of glory

to come when it settled to sleep in a brain

fast asleep without knowing how deeply the ether

enwound it in which–when hail started to fall–

then from a star-crowned forest tree its own creature,

a leaf veined alive with one long early call

encoded in each cell and now-withered tissue–

Once a green luna moth flew to my hand:

So like a woman, attracting a bliss you

can’t use, but still long for–Who planted this land?