Silent, still sap
Of the trees
At sunrise
My dog walks along paths,
Circuitous,
And lead-wise, I follow.
What a joy and a pleasure,
This half-frozen breeze
That says 'Awake from
Your slumber,
Your sorrow,
Your weeping.'
For I cannot face another
Slumber
If sorrow is its promise.
I wake to you,
Drowned in dreams,
And heavy with hums
Of snores and breath,
Your back a precipice
From which my fingers
Slide to their deaths.
You will not be woken,
Pale skin and a freckle,
Half-joking, your alchemy,
A challenge to mine.
Wake, wake!
The singe of
The sap
In the nostrils of
Roused breath!
How sweetly it sings
To the trained ear,
Forgotten by swarms
Who in caves
Await the warmth
Of sun and of bodies!
Soon spring will come
And rob from us
These brisk awakenings,
The dawns of our forgetting,
And we will be left only
With the sleeping earth,
Hot with reproduction,
And the precipice of your
Overarching back,
In calm blessed ignorance
Of this fact:
Slope rising,
Then shrinking.
Wake, wake!
Sweet sap,
Remind us daily
Of the quietness of things,
Of the hope of day,
Of the distances traversed
Of the joy of Here!
My dog,
that low-rumbling dream,
And I.
