Garden Ghosts

Two moon-white moths are fluttering
Athwart the haunted gloom;
I watch them waver, wing to wing,
Past many a spectral bloom.

No footfall wakes these mossy walks;
The mist’s thin streamers trail,
From twisted shrubs and writhen stalks,
Round all the coppice pale.

Low winds amid the leaves complain;
The firefly’s wizard spark
Makes mimic lightning where yon twain
Go wandering down the dark.

And still they flutter side by side,
As night’s chill currents flow,
To that lone tryst-place where they died
Long centuries ago.

James B. Kenyon.