Moth’s Whimsy, by Kath Healing

The Terror Essence of Nature, by Margaret Case (Canada) 2025. Click image for artist site.

Moth’s Whimsy

the moths circle their own astonishment,
soft bodies orbiting a question
no one asks out loud.

fragility, I realize,
is not the opposite of force.
it is the form
force sometimes wears
paper wings,
dust-fine,
beating glass
until the night listens.

at the edge of the canvas,
ferns keep writing themselves
into the air,
a green script older than language.
I lean close,
but they refuse to translate
their silence repeating itself
until it becomes chorus.

above, the birds scatter across sky,
dark silhouettes cutting fractures
through the painted dusk.
their wings are small knives,
their flight not fearless
but willing
proof that absence
can still leave a trace.

and here it is
the terror essence of nature:
that everything fragile endures,
and endurance is never gentle.

I want to believe in this ecology:
fern, bird, moth,
all persistence,
all refusal,
each one
a way of saying
light-seeking,
half-whimsy,
half-riot.

Kath Healing 

Kath Healing (they/them) is a queer, disabled, and neurodivergent poet living on the unceded territories of the Lək̓ʷəŋən-speaking peoples (Victoria, BC). Their work explores myth, memory, and survival, often blending ecological imagery with queer embodiment. They are the first prize winner of the 2025 Victoria Writers’ Society poetry contest, with publication forthcoming in the society’s journal, Island Writer, and in Becoming: An Anthology of What-If Poems About Women and Womanhood (JLRB Press, 2026).