Accipiter
In fevered dream
you remind me,
I am not yet perfect
Still, this ripple,
like the accipiter
in the garden of birdsong,
precedes and follows me
A violence so subtle
as to seem natural Yet I wake and you
sleep beside, and
our legs overlap
by the same instinct
as rattlesnakes that know
the touch of their kin,
and I can make little
sense of this soft power
of the wild alive in you
that urges you to find
the wholeness,
to learn to accept
what is only