Grain Moths

by Anne Moore Odell

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They are everywhere, eggs imperceivable,   
clinging to the bottom of cans, their webs 
the same drab color as the cabinets. 
They can chew through cardboard and plastic
so I moved the flour to the freezer. 
How many generations have lived here?  
Did they move into the house before us  
or hitchhike in on our bag of rice? I see them 
spread across continents along the supply chain:
silo, barge, factory, 18 wheeler, store, car, house.
If you touch one, they instantly become ash. 
We have lived here for ten years of dinners, 
watched the kids grow up, leave, my father die,
​always fighting a battle we won’t win. 

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Anne Moore Odell lives, teaches, and walks around Southern Vermont, the ancestral and unceded homeland of the Western Abenaki.  Some of the places she's had poetry in are the Massachusetts Review, Red Tree Review and Bicoastal Review.

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