Lay your hands on me
braced against bad weather
what a welcome
coming in from the cold
It’s every time you gather me close
all I can hear is your heart
beating like
Gabriel’s drum of skin
at the beginning of the world
you
begin me
with each
breath
forming laborious as
fatigued children
stubbornly persist
to dance
with half sleeping limbs
slack and graceless
In their abundant honesty
unguarded weariness
not intoxicate enough
to peel them from an ache
for music reveals
your song
If translated
portioning day into ribbons
each wreath a moment
pressed behind slide
to reexamine in mind palace
the sound of life
cymbals beneath earth
flutes and oboe forming wood
paper as soft as hide
writing our language by intoned key
first a rise, a fall, a swell
contagious momentum picking
up trained netting drawing flickering
into chalice
drunk deeply by fingers of pyre
dipping their ember quills
thirsty ducks carving water
coming up for air
gleaming plumage
reflecting our shape
silhouetted love
It’s every time you gather me close
all I can hear is your heart
beating like
Gabriel’s drum of skin
at the beginning of the world
you
begin me