Come Close
Come close, breathing and sparrows,
daylight, patience. Me, stopped
at the red light, weeping secretly.
Bearing with each other.
Living. Tending to sorrow,
to the world. Come close, dear life,
the emptiness, the hush inside.
The waiting, and my daughter
saying pat, pat, pat.
I’m patting cars as they go by.
For doing a good job driving.
Light. A rushing, and the giving
of soft things. Patience of voices
and of songs, of prayers. Of everything.
Of sparrows. Of the sky through
many branches while the car
is moving. Life, come close.
Come close, what is.
Patience, despair. Closer. That’s it.
Come close. Come very close.
• • •
Michael Lavers is the author of two poetry collections, After Earth and The Inextinguishable, both published by the University of Tampa Press. His poems have appeared in Ploughshares, The Kenyon Review, AGNI, Southwest Review, The Georgia Review, and elsewhere. He teaches poetry at Brigham Young University.