Shifting in sleep you sigh, slide
your arm away, uncouple us but
take my hand and draw me round:
refolding, so, our doubled bloodbeat, breath.
And all the years we’ve known each other,
lose and nightly find each other
return to this—return to this
refolding of ourselves in darkness and against
the cold: the sly bitter night
that will, with the knack of time, unpick us,
flesh from bone, when our words return
to air, our careful fingers to the ground.
When all is done and said, at last
there’s only this—only this holding pattern
staying us in place. Like the late repeat
of an old movie, its final reel winding
through spools of dream: a stricken plane
circling a blacked-out town
where a safe landing is touch and go;
and the lovers—one caught above, the other
poised far below—folding,
refolding thin envelopes of hope …
Then fade to lights and sirens, to propellers
slowing into exclamation; and we the viewers,
the actors, breathing again as it ends,
again, as planned. It ends in this
arrival, touching down into the waiting,
half-finished hands and bodies
closing in quotation, into a dance. Yes,
only this to keep our pieces whole,
the travellers lost in sleep, lost way deep
inside us somewhere, somewhere at home.
