Elinor Ann Walker

I don’t remember where I first read about moonflowers, but I was determined to grow them. A full bloom is about as wide as a human face and opens within a minute or two right before the eyes. There’s something about how its fragrance intensifies on a humid summer night—and how the huge white flowers seem to glow in the dark—that makes the moonflower seem magical. Each year, I plant as many seeds as I can get to germinate. One August evening, I counted 28 flowers on the vines that came up around my pond. I sat out there in the dark and let the night breathe that sweetness all around me. It was inevitable that I’d want to write a poem about them. The funny thing about writing a poem is that sometimes the poem seems to have its own mind. I kept trying to write a poem about moonflowers, but the poem kept drifting moth-ward. With its name, the Luna moth would seem a likely visitor to my midnight garden, but this moth, though nocturnal and attracted to light, is much more likely to stick close to a host tree such as a hickory or birch, where it lays its eggs. So as lovely as it was to imagine those luminous green wings against a silken-white flower backdrop, I saw instead the mostly brown Carolina sphinx moth, which is a night pollinator and impressive flyer whose wings I’ve felt whirr by my face on more than one occasion. There’s an artist’s lesson in here somewhere, and I think it’s that if we open ourselves to wonder, the world will whisper surprise again and again.