One evening while I sat drawing in my studio, an exquisite moth flew in and landed gently on my curtains. Her wings would easily have spanned the distance between the tips of my outstretched thumb and pinky.

I was living and making in a beautiful glass-walled barn overlooking small mountains, cloaked in a blanket of trees, with the picturesque Never Never River at their feet.

Lady Moth stayed for a few charmed days, gracing me with her majestic presence.

She seemed to exude a sense of timeless wisdom. Her calm, unhurried movements; her stately wingspan; the opulent plushness of her golden velvet cloak: all contributed to the feeling that she was an Empress of the Forest.

She seemed to exist in another realm – timeless and beyond the concerns and anxieties that can so pre-occupy us human beings.

The patterns in her furry wings reminded me of a beautiful grandmotherly patchwork quilt; an earthly jewel from an ancient land.