All night I hear myself coughing through the night.
In the morning, the morning light makes no sound
or a sound so small I can’t hear it over small
changes in my wife’s own breathing. The change
of season surprised us again, new leaves again,
a shock of crimson shocking the peony back
to life. It’s a wonder, one of us said of this life,
you can’t hear them growing, the trees growing
I mean. But you can feel the mean things
in your lungs all night for sure, all the way
to where you think your breathing is their breathing,
the muted rasp of spring—beautiful springing
from the lungs of songbirds or the lungfuls of breath
a newborn takes at night, but hard to take
when it’s you, up, in the weird undarkening dark
before dawn breathing and listening to your breathing.
We go on and on about our breath; we breathe
and listen and breathe and don’t listen and never
hear what we want to hear —the light we’re sure
is there, just as sure as the morning birds are there
in the morning behind the window, behind the riot
of rising light, which makes me squint and makes
my wife begin to wake, the birds who wake
so early just to have their say and say
it twice: that what I can’t make out outside
is made for them to hear and made for them
to make for me, remade, and I’m to pass
it on, this light, in the rasp of a lighter song.
