Before dawn
when sleep
is the only body
the body knows,
when darkness curves
like warm breath,
a branch above a river,
over pillows, blankets, sheets,
before whatever dream you had becomes
ground-in dirt, a forest floor, before
the animals in the hedge find their nests,
climb in, settle down,
that’s when
love-eyes open, and you
envision the waxing gibbous moon, you
hear a baritone sax, a Spanish guitar, see
geese in formation, river-washed stone,
you remember your hands barely touching,
a feeling of floating, even how to get home,
that’s when
you discover
loss is a pebble, and
you are still
on a windy hillside
facing the sun.
Published in Cider Press Review, Volume 27, Issue 4.
Hilda Weiss is the co-founder and curator for www.Poetry.LA, a website that features videos of poets and poetry venues in Southern California. She has been published in journals such as Rattle, Tinderbox, Bicoastal Review, Cultural Daily, Poet Lore, Salamander, and Spillway, as well as in anthologies such as Wide Awake: Poets of Los Angeles. In 2023 her manuscript, Seemingly Normal, was a finalist in the National Federation of State Poetry Societies competition. She lives in Santa Monica where she grows her own vegetables in a garden full of native California plants.
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