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REACHING FOR THE STARS

Deep in the night I am awakened by a strange thrumming-drumming--outside, I think dreamily in the dark--it has the yearning quality of sensual signaling from male to female, likely an insect (unlikely for a human of either sex to be hanging from the eaves and thrumming--sleep blends these realities with soporific fluidity). Then for a less sleepy moment I think it might be some kind of a bird, maybe an owl, when I realize that it's too small to be an owl, too rapid and insistent; it must be some insect trying to get in through the screen. Then more awake I think: Trying to get in through the screen? Makes no sense; there are no lights on in here, and now that it's winter there are no screens on the windows! But that part of my brain that doesn't want to sleep (admittedly the minority of me) is nevertheless trying to make sense of this in that persistent dichotomous pain-in-the-fundament way minorities have, so okay what the heck is it? Then I realize it's coming from the closed skylight above my head: squinting with one eye, I can make out a dark silhouette against the mid-night starry density: it is a big black stealth moth trying to reach the stars, drummm-thrummm. How in the dark can I not sympathize with that noble ambition? I reach up and open the skylight a crack, then fall back asleep unworried that a sudden blizzard might come during the night and make a drift of me. The free and star-bound moth saw to it, and in the morning there was a blue sky.