Teetering Lullaby

Come to rest my darling,

the trees are autumn-twinged,

the ocelot of my mind is out,

would rest in the long grass.

Comes to rest the bus in hydraulic

exhalation, a puppy-scamper wind

finds itself over water and rests,

rest the future fires rushing,

rest the past ash.

The heart’s

adumbrations of bees may never

cease, not the hopeful hum

or peevish sting but rest I would

my hand upon your breast, sleep I would

above the troposphere. No accounting

for your beauty moving through me

like a branch, a sigh coming from under

the squeaky remnants of the old barn.

Whatever’s buried there that once caused

such alarm has come back to forgive,

to apologize for how it all went wrong.

So rest my darling, my daring, the journey’s

almost over though I’ve gone nowhere

and never meant to stay there.