writing home

the small-birds have finally
found the window feeder
and the dogs are enthralled
with their sudden proximity

we are well, though feeling
the spring in our bones –
that gentle eruption debuts
a new brand of restlessness

the boards of the porch have been
too damp for comfortable reading,
and coffee for now is confined
beneath the mossy awning

but sweet and peppery
the season’s trees tease
the beginnings of green –
one promise kept, at least,
among so many hundreds dropped

these are days of small news,
buds of flowery hearsay – not much
here to report except the hummingbirds
are damp-winged and bright
among the new leaves of the maple

© Sarah Whiteley

I have called your bones mine

I have called your bones mine,
and pulled your limbs about me,
so that I might (in darkness)
be taken for the beating core of you –

the same delight that lies in curling
vine-like (rapacious green) through branches
toward some finer, higher light
pulses in the throat, a growing thing

that rises and places its pleasures
in that nook of you, which is me,
so that I might (in reverence)
be taken for the vehement shine of you

© Sarah Whiteley

letters to _____ – vii

in the fading hours
when light rolls
thin as skin
into the deepening blue
of shared night
I am as alive with you
in this dark
as the night insects
who wake to vibrate
each leaf into being
even by the stars
you remain sun-dipped
and redolent of day’s heat
I would have you tight held
and as wanting as I
exchanging breath
for pulse and tendons
taut with expectancy
for the benediction
of pressed palms
and the song I become
beneath your fingers
all questions of want
addressed by lines of proof
laid down by mouth
to shadowed curve
but more than all
I would have
the quiet best of you
close carried as the self’s
most secret pleasures
sealed safe
in hallowed certainty
beneath exalted night

© Sarah Whiteley