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 so

And even today, the cedar waxwings forgave my haste again, letting me see the bright red tips of their wings at ten paces by noon’s light, leaving me to wonder by what grace I might find this love, which knows no merit