I Leave the Porch Light to the Moths
A divorced gardener writes poems about the small creatures that arrive when she stops waiting for one particular person, making room for anger, attention and unimportant joy.
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How it begins
Porch Inventory
One cracked pot. Two chairs, neither an admission. A spider rebuilding the same corner after I have brushed it clear. The lamp he said wasted electricity. Under it, tonight, a moth the color of old envelopes. I would like to offer a more impressive inventory of my changed life. Instead I have bought a bag of compost and carried it badly. There is a dark mark on my shirt where the bag split. From a distance it might look like an expensive flower. Up close it smells of the practical matter of continuing.
Ruth Names the Visitor
She says it is a peppered moth, then changes her mind. We stand with our glasses slipping down our noses while the creature declines to settle the question. I am grateful for an expert who can say perhaps. All year I have been given definite answers about what I should do with my evenings. Join something. Leave something. Try the coast. Ruth fetches a book with mud on the cover. The moth leaves before we find its page. We make tea anyway, a modest example of a plan surviving the disappearance of its original purpose.
The Untidy Corner
I let the nettles keep their patch. This is not forgiveness. I still pull them from the path, wearing the thick gloves I once bought him and now find fit me well enough. Some days I want a garden with straight lines and no surprise beneath a leaf. Some days I let the beans climb the broken chair. At night the lamp draws small bodies from the dark. They do not bring news. They strike the glass, rest, and try another direction. I sit beside them with my cooling cup. Nothing has been explained. The air smells of rain, and I have remembered to bring the washing in.
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Outline and characters
Develop this idea
The poems can be funny, irritated, observant, and unfinished without making every insect represent healing. Use accurate natural details where possible and allow some creatures to remain unidentified. Vary stanza length and include a prose list or field note. The speaker's divorce should have particular textures beyond abandonment. Let the garden require work even when she would prefer an elegant revelation.
- The porch light stays on after a departure.
- Moths become unwelcome nightly visitors.
- Ruth identifies one damaged species.
- The garden records anger without curing it.
- A storm breaks the carefully planned beds.
- Helen leaves an untidy corner alone.
- A shared supper interrupts a private ritual.
- Winter makes attention harder to sustain.
- New growth ignores the old garden plan.
- The light serves a different welcome.
Characters
- Helen, 54. Gardener after divorce
- Ruth, 63. Neighbor and amateur naturalist
Series possibilities
- A second collection could move from the private garden into a changing neighborhood.
