His arms, the quiet trees, our spines. He yawns
I think, how long can this quiet last?
how long can my snare-drumming heart
beat softly till its sound wakes us?
but it is the wren that does, her small grey
body casts a sunlit flutter across our eyes.
standing, brushing moss from my clothes I know
this is a small end to another beginning.
the stutter and stop and start of
all that we will remember
long diminished, dried out like the leaves
small like the wren
sudden and swift, her mate appears to us
he dances—petaling and rooting us