Moons and Hermits Have No Wings

The scent and color

Of pale wistaria seems

 Distant from the moon.

~ Buson  [Englished by Phillip Whidden

The moth has now rejected petals of

The cherry tree and wants instead a sky

With evening crescent moon.  Desire and love

Are far too warm for twilight moth.  Its eye

Is on horizons as in Venus, Mars

And Jupiter, its sky of moons.  Not quite

One hundred, softer, subtler than the stars,

The giant’s satellites take up their flight

Around that sphere with zero interest in

The moth, and so that creature has to yearn,

Aspiring to distant lunar spin.

Obsessions do not always need flame’s burn.

  Ask hermits with their mountain tops, prayer’s snow

    And caves.  The hermits torture self with woe.

© Phillip Whidden