Lantern

A lantern hangs from a branch melting its light into the immense dark. It could be a scene from shogunate Japan, in a temple garden late at night with cool air drifting down from the mountains. The monks asleep. The sound of a frog breaking the holy silence with a sudden plop, as if all was held there frozen in a haiku, a chilled perfection caught to resonate a sadness within the soul in having to let such a moment go. A soft breeze moving a leaf slowly across a pond to intercept the reflection of a rising moon. But this lantern is here in a neighbour's yard, a focussed still in the centre of a moonless night, suddenly flashing bright blue and smoking from the seared wings of an electrocuted moth, crackling thus in the startled filaments of the mind.