Michael Symmons Roberts > Quotes

“Grounded"

I

At the edge of sleep.
my head on your breast.
I hear your heart lock
with the cloth pulse

of a skein of geese.
which arrows over roofs
towards the source
of water, dreams, oblivion.

II

Asleep on your front,
your shoulder-blades reveal
themselves as wing-stumps.

Now I know what you
have given up for me,
for this November night,

this moonlit bed.
this sluicing rain
these distant fireworks.

And I think of migrants
on the wing for weeks,
filleting the air with sleep.

Ill

Today huge tethered kites
— torsos, mermaids, lizards, bears—
were animated by sea air,
as though the next world hung
above us like a mezzanine.

Tonight I lie awake and run
your absence through my fingers:
here's the touch of you,
your warmth and give.
our conspiracy of flightlessress.

Michael Symmons Roberts, Corpus. (Jonathan Cape / Random House; New edition July 20, 2004)”
― Michael Symmons Roberts, Corpus

“Tonight I lie awake and run
your absence through my fingers:
here’s the touch of you,
your warmth and give,
our conspiracy of flightlessness.

from “Grounded”
― Michael Symmons Roberts, Corpus