Japanese Moon Moth (Actias artemis) Photo by By entophile – https://www.inaturalist.org/photos/153644961, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=114060033

Dear Readers, lots of people write poems about butterflies (such as this cracker by Ellen Bass), but how about our mothy friends? Here is a haiku by Buson (1716 – 1784), followed by a response from Billy Collins. See what you think…

On the one-ton temple bell
Yosa Buson

On the one-ton temple bell
A moon moth, folded into sleep,
Sits still.

Japan by Billy Collins

Today I pass the time reading
a favorite haiku,
saying the few words over and over.

It feels like eating
the same small, perfect grape
again and again.

I walk through the house reciting it
and leave its letters falling
through the air of every room.

I stand by the big silence of the piano and say it.
I say it in front of a painting of the sea.
I tap out its rhythm on an empty shelf.

I listen to myself saying it,
then I say it without listening,
then I hear it without saying it.

And when the dog looks up at me,
I kneel down on the floor
and whisper it into each of his long white ears.

It’s the one about the one-ton temple bell
with the moth sleeping on its surface,

and every time I say it, I feel the excruciating
pressure of the moth
on the surface of the iron bell.

When I say it at the window,
the bell is the world
and I am the moth resting there.

When I say it at the mirror,
I am the heavy bell
and the moth is life with its papery wings.

And later, when I say it to you in the dark,
you are the bell,
and I am the tongue of the bell, ringing you,

and the moth has flown
from its line
and moves like a hinge in the air above our bed.