Even the Weather

The air was still today—

no wind to move the trees,

the merest brush of cloud

fixed, as the earnest daub of white

on a child’s blue canvas.

Last night I felt of the stillness of you,

the transition of your breathing

a quiet subsidence of strength,

a drowsed descent into unconscious.

And though I willed the world to whisper

a passing car, careless

of the silence it might fracture,

woke you,

and I relinquished you again

to the ante-meridian emptiness of the road

that took you home.