“Lessons from A Dead Moth”
by
Glenn
Moss
Between the ages of 8 and 14, I spent part of each
summer with relatives who lived in East Meadow, Long Island; my escape from a
small three room apartment in Brooklyn and its pressures of disappointment and
rumble of subway cars heading to Manhattan and Brighton Beach. During those
summers, I joined my slightly older cousin in his then passion of butterfly
catching...or, more often, the stalking and pursuit of butterflies in suburban
fields, wood and undeveloped lot.
In early morning and near dusk, we would wait
patiently, breathe slowly, watch for the flutter and glimpse of movement and
color. Purple against a deepening green, a splash of yellow-orange on a
thinnest hint of white, a mauve prayer of opening and closing wings as a flower
sways with more than a breeze accompanying the opening and closing of a long
day.
When I was older and described those moments in the
blossoming years of Earth Day and Marvin Gaye singing of the ecology, I was
advised that when my earthly days were over, my soul will be captured by a
million sticky feet as it seeks final release; the beating of millions of
wings, mocking me as their rainbow dust covers my mouth and eyes so my cries
will not be heard, carrying me to an expanse of cracked and forgotten earth, my soul lowered to a place of species redress
where the antennae of all my former recipients of pinched death pin me forever,
so that I may ever know the fate I so willingly dispensed with formaldehyde.
Such may be my fate in the mystery to come, but
maybe a bit of confession may offer redemption.
I am walking in Prospect Park when Spring is
beginning to outpace the chilling plod of Winter. I know what I seek and where
to look. There...in that copse to the left, just enough away from the path to perhaps
escape disturbance from prey, human or other.
However, my intent is clear and I find the
chrysalis. It is heavy and fat from metamorphosis and building desire to be
free.
But I have other plans.
I break the branch to which the life transforming
case is bound by once wet but now hardened filaments spun from a mouth now
changed and ready for a new life.
But I have other plans.
In my apartment, I have taken a cardboard box given
to me by Mr. Clifford, who owned the small toy store on Flatbush Avenue around
the corner from Lincoln Road. I placed a green mesh net over the top to allow
air and a captor’s gaze eyes to get in.
Whether this effort was made for a school project
or simply for me, I can't remember. I don't have a recollection of any academic
purpose. My guess is, understanding me then as I have come to know myself more,
living as I did in my own meshed box of fears and isolation, I may have been
seeking comfort from bringing a shared existence to a being I could control.
I placed the branch inside the box and waited.
Within two days the chrysalis began to rock back and forth, evidence of pushing
from within appearing at several points. When I returned from a brief errand outside,
I saw the Cecropia Moth emerging.
Smiling, I ran outside and across the street to the
park. I gathered what plants, flowers and stems I thought useful and necessary.
I returned home and placed them inside the box. The moth was sitting on the
branch, still flexing its wet and
discovered wings, large and lush with color.
Watching, as the moth fully opened its wings and
was motionless, I had a vision of what this moment would be had I not taken the
chrysalis. The moth would sense its place, its time, its purpose. Here, except
for the uprooted plants and flowers, it received only the rumbling of the
subway and my heated breath.
Over the next few days, I would come home and see
if it had eaten any of the new plants and flowers I brought in from the park. I
thought it was feeding; at least that is what I told myself.
And then, I noticed a change in behavior. The moth
attached itself to the side of the box and its fat brown body began to pulse. I
didn’t know what was happening. Maybe it was dying and I had served only to
hasten a death.
But then I saw something beginning to emerge...small
pinkish masses. Eggs! First in one part of the box, then it moved and over half
the box was covered with small pools of pink.
I like to think it was this egg laying that moved
me, but I can't really be sure. What I do know is that I decided to take the
moth out of the box and let it be free within the apartment. Whatever impulse I
had to allow the moth to live more than its boxed existence, I didn't go so far
as to take it to the park and release it.
Instead, much to my mother's consternation, I would
take the moth from the box and let it fly about when I was home. It would land
on my bed, on my books. And, more and more, on me. Often on my shoulder, like
some trained bird. I would walk around the apartment with the moth on my
shoulder and my parents would look at me as they too often did, as if I was
something too perplexing to communicate with. They asked me to put the moth
back in the box.
I would comply, but always seek that moment when I
could free it; but never completely.
Over the next three weeks, I would bring back new
plants and flowers and take the moth out. I convinced myself it was happy and
was living longer than it might in the park where birds or some other creature
would kill it.
One day, I came back and looked into the box. The
moth was lying motionless on the bottom. I reached in and touched it. Moved it.
It was dead. I keep saying "it"; I never offered a name. I took the
moth out and brought it in to my mother, in the kitchen. She looked at the moth
in my hand and quickly suggested the incinerator. The handy crucible offering a
swift ride to cremation.
I had no other ideas; burying it in the park did
not occur to me. So, I found a brown paper bag, put the moth inside and walked down
the building hallway to the door that opened to the incinerator chute. I pulled
down the chute, placed the bag at the
lip and gently pushed it forward. I watched it slide down and into the sooty warm
shaft, down into the smoldering mass of garbage in the basement.
Later when I went outside and looked up, I saw gray
smoke coming from the vent on the building roof. The smoke spread, mostly
drifting over to Eastern Parkway. A few wisps though, maybe pushed by a wind I
couldn't feel on the street, moved over my head and to the park.
I tell myself now that I believed the burned
remains of the moth were in those wisps. Maybe I did.
Because I never went butterfly
catching again.
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