Three Windows

By Cheryl Caesar

At first, it is only a blurring of wings,

a frenzied sphere of movement. So fast

I cannot discern color or shape. Nearly all

its mass has turned to energy, vibrating

in the lower left corner of my kitchen window.

I go to lift the sash, and see

for the first time a small dark dot

gliding down the white frame, its eight

legs motionless. Arriving at the captive,

who is not trapped between panes, but tethered

by some body part, it stretches out

a limb to touch the beating wing,

gentle as a nurse’s palm that rests

coolly on your skin just after the injection.

The moth goes still on that side.

For a moment I can see the dusty

ivory wing, brown-spotted, ten times

the spider’s size. The moth resumes

its frenzy. The spider reascends

to spin another sticky thread. Now what

is there for me to do? If I sweep out

the moth, release it at the back door,

will it still fly? It’s lost part of the vital

dust from its wings; it’s part-bound already

in the fatal filaments. I turn and leave the room.

Returning in half an hour, I find the blur

no longer sphere but hemisphere. One wing

is stilled. Oh, how long will it take? I’m trapped

in witness, as if finding a cat-torn sparrow

past saving. Again I turn away. An hour later

the moth is a wrapped mummy, a husk

of matter, all energy departed. I say a silent

blessing and let the spider feed. Predators too

must live. Would it be any easier

to watch a spider starve, or only quieter?

I remember an inert cat I found one morning

in a shelter kitchen, trapped between storm window

and inner pane, whose wooden prop had fallen. The creature

seemed flattened, drenched in its own excretions. I lifted

it out, revived it slowly with cool damp towels.

I remember because it was so clearly

an accident, something I could see and fix.

Not nature. But as I return to my computer monitor,

a third window opens, full of stink and smoke,

noise and confusion. Flash bangs and rubber bullets

turned on the people of LA, by camo-spotted

bodies with insect faces. This is not nature,

but some hideous facsimile. Not accident,

but human choice. Being also human,

I cannot choose to stand outside

the window. I must get in, with my scabby

old wings, my feeble flutterings, and face

the flung sticky filaments, the stab

and poison of the chelicerae. I imagine

the cloud of a thousand moths, overpowering a spider.

Cheryl Caesar is an ex- expatriate, having lived for 25 years in France, Italy and the Republic of Ireland. She teaches writing at Michigan State University. She shows her artwork and gives readings locally, and publishes them internationally. Her anti-Trump chapbook Flatman was published by Thurston Howl Publications in 2020.