here is where I begin to feel
all the familiar airs
that rush of woodsy musk
the heady hint of rum
they’ve assembled
here at thin wrists
and between breasts
to intermingle with thrums
low hums of pulse points
with infectious restlessness
and I am left as emerald-breasted
as ruby-throated as the hummingbird
we caught only glimpses of
amid the summer quince
© Sarah Whiteley
dearest, I have not forgotten
where I’ve left off
here, I’ve dog-eared the page
to mark it
and just in case
have laid that small red
feather of an unknown bird
found while reading
beneath our final morning
every now and then
I’ll place my fingertips
along the spine,
ruffle the pages,
glance at our names
scribed just inside,
the pages waiting
for you to catch us up
and find as I have
that between the lines
love does reside
with a grace like rain
and the peace of drowsy trees
whose branches lace
the winter moon
© Sarah Whiteley
because I was full
of the nape of your neck
I had no room for morning
no time for anything more
than following the lines
of your back
into abstraction
© Sarah Whiteley
lying here beside,
fingers breathing soft
in intermingled time
and burning presence,
an intruding moon
spies the luring slope
of slumb’ring shoulders
and moves to rest
unbidden between
as silvery light
and unabated as lips
that kisses lay
in trailing paths
to rouse you
© Sarah Whiteley
I keep you here
with the sweet grass
and the sage,
in the sweeping slant
of soughing plains,
the pink winds
and waking golds
of light rising slow
along the river
I keep you here
and just there
beyond the tilt
of widening sky,
where sleeping wishes
bending lie
to rest with
dreaming grasses
© Sarah Whiteley
just here reside
small flutterings
as if the trifling ghosts
of small birds
(restless things)
pulled short of migration
had dithering paused
and remain
perching somewhere
between breast and sky
somewhere here
between you and I
© Sarah Whiteley
I wish I had known
the tilt of you
and the demands
your hands
never hinted
I would not then
have so moderated
the bent of me
to you
© Sarah Whiteley
I’d cross any street
for the hint of your lips
for the twirl of you
’round my skin
you know you leave me
thin as restraint can be
without breakin’ like waves
if you’d just let me
lay it out long and easy-like
drawin’ down these lines of you
lay ‘em down for lengths like mine
let hesitation drown
unhurried in the sweet slow thrum
of fingering beats
Basie and Li’l Darlin’
could smooth out
the edges of anyone’s night
Sugar hums it with me
makin’ everything as sweet
as that first pinch
of need deep as breathin’
I’d cross any street
for any taste of you
© Sarah Whiteley
:::strongly influenced by Count Basie’s Li’l Darlin’:::
I am unallayed
in a hundred little ways
like pins they prick
chasing paths after pulses
in our white-capped bay
these peaks of sheets
and tides of turning limbs
need breathes silent
silver where the gleam of me
flickers at your throat
pressing petals
into fiercest buds of want
I would drift in kisses
and seething shine
orbital to your touch
here you are illimitable
here, my fire, you are mine
© Sarah Whiteley
this morning
a dust-white moth
flittered impervious
to improbability
precarious outside the window
twenty-seven floors up
and I, more unsettled than he,
held how quick the rise to love
how equally impervious
and fragile as moths
these improbable elevations
it is nothing less
and it is so much more
than flinging oneself beyond
this safety of glass
© Sarah Whiteley
