Like This, Love Sleeps
like this, love
sleeps as if in a country
where no one sings
and then suddenly one song erupts
and all of nature rises, raptors,
songbirds, locusts, leaves anticipating
the light, flowers unfurling,
and the sun itself, round as comfort,
and you wonder how your hand did not spend
the night enfolded in your lover’s.
Not yet dawn, you do not come to your senses
as much as they come to you
like old friends or family,
like students who share the early class
in hoods and warming gear,
who nod assent but do not speak.
but absorb knowledge like plants
take up rain in an arid season, then share
to each other through entangled roots,
senses driving loneliness to a corner seat
and you huddled like a sparrow
within a throng of sparrows, blissful,
oblivious, not yet wary of the crow
or the hawk and the meaning of talons.
• • •
Jeff Burt lives in Santa Cruz County, California, with his wife and a July abundance of plums. He has also contributed to Heartwood, Williwaw Journal, Red Wolf Journal, Rabid Oak, and Gold Man Review.