You should have been here,
in the bed
that held us both,
the soft hinges of your heart
opening and closing
to the stutter and lisp of the white
birch trembling in the jubilance,
the swarm of it,
should know how
good it was to be awake at 3 a m
in the purl and slip
of sound skidding through
the lattices of the tree,
then in the light arriving to take
a careful inventory of shadows
passing across our window shade
in the world
still lovely without you.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 12
