A grove of deep sycamores drifts onto the Hudson,

The blue lights on a sledge

Go white as it drags its iron nets

Slowly up the tench of the river:

Inside an old Studebaker, my father sits beside a meadow.

Next to him there’s a hot thermos, and a little box

Of codeine tablets for the pain in his knee. He reaches

Over into the backseat for a red, plaid blanket, it has

White hair on it from a long dead cat. The blanket

Goes over his lap— at that moment, a giant

Spectacle-moth settled like a falling hazel leaf on the blanket:

The moth, powdered in lime and chalk, has a lurid green

Eye on each forewing: it has come to my father after

A long season of feeding

From the night-flowering sweet tobacco!

The spectacle-moth has settled and died, and there is

The smell of burning gasoline. On the river, a horn blows

Twice from a lamp-room that is followed by barges loaded

With coal; flames from a foundry climb over pine trees that

Are miles down the road…

Across the water there are lanterns

Over the lawns of a mansion where women

In long gowns are playing croquet without wickets. These women

Are drinking; they laugh and wave to

The lonely, bored man in the tug-boat who pulls on the horn, again.

My father waves to him; the moth closes

Its shattered ice-green eyes like a blackened coal miner

Stepping out of a mountain into the winter daylight…