night pollinators

watching the moths skirt the lampposts           you want to be someone

else         they dance in long grey drapes like a woman in a movie

who sews her own dress from the curtains                  but forgets to

shake the dust off                  night work is lonely        but throughout

the hemisphere          there are orchids blooming in the dark         there are

people who cannot sleep         dreaming or looking through old photographs

               of when they were six years old            gorging themselves

on swollen plums all afternoon           plucking them straight

from the tree                heavy and overripe              a whole city is on fire

               for the third time in a month               and somebody somewhere

saw white flowers unfolding in silver light             and named them

for the moon                       an hour before sunrise you fall asleep      

               your shoulders sinking into a bed of wet sand               and the

moths at the streetlights and the night-blooms alike             pick up

their trailing skirts                            and carry themselves home

Ash Davida Jane

Ash Davida Jane is a poet & bookseller from Wellington. Her work can be found in Starling, Mimicry, Food Court, & -Ology, & is forthcoming in Sport, Peach Mag, & Mayhem. Her first book Every Dark Waning was published in 2016 by Platypus Press.​