[Your station, the window; light, the scent of prayer.]

Your station, the window; light, the scent of prayer.
Behind you, body: its low, night-cadenced breath,
globes of heated air that open to your palms

like hatching things, then circle near his lips
and settle, eager to be retaken in. Body
that you have written, body that has slaked

its thirst on watchfulness, on sibilant light,
on hands that hover just beyond the skin's
near-lucent edge, as if to bathe within

the soul's half-seen, crepuscular haze, a glow
like moon's encrypted aureole through slow-throated
clouds. With a somnolent, laggard grace,

morning drags its tongue across the farthest
rim of sky, stretching there its first
vermilion skein of daybreak, staining maple-

top and river's edge, easing night
from out its harbor in your unfilled space
upon his bed, who turns and gathers dark

about him, as if to guard it, offering refuge
to his quick-departing visions, here
where beauty sleeps beneath your wakefulness.

Garth Greenwell
Copyright 2001

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