Metastasis: Worry-Moth Poem by Claudia Emerson

yours is not the majestic Gypsy
the Codling Luna Wax or grander

Atlas with the appetite
of a plague entire fields

succumbing to them whole
generations of bees this is

the unseen closeted unassuming
gray that seeks out last winter's

cloth another season drawn
to the body's scent what was

its heat to consume early that scant
much of you fragile lace-like

the constellate erasures of the coat
it makes for you to wear