it's been heaven knowing you

Variation on the Word Sleep

Margaret Atwood 1939 –

I would like to watch you sleeping, which may not happen. I would like to watch you, sleeping. I would like to sleep with you, to enter your sleep as its smooth dark wave slides over my head

and walk with you through that lucent wavering forest of bluegreen leaves with its watery sun & three moons towards the cave where you must descend, towards your worst fear

I would like to give you the silver branch, the small white flower, the one word that will protect you from the grief at the center of your dream, from the grief at the center. I would like to follow you up the long stairway again & become the boat that would row you back carefully, a flame in two cupped hands to where your body lies beside me, and you enter it as easily as breathing in

Iguazu Falls, Argentina

I hope we get some heavy summer rain this year. Lord do we need it.

Bornean elephant Elephas maximus borneensis

Ada Limón, from The Hurting Kind; "Banished Wonders"

Franz Wright, from Walking to Martha’s Vineyard; “Flight”

Bigg's killer whale Orcinus orca

Franz Wright, from The Beforelife: Poems; “Learning a Language”

from dear layal by hala alyan, published in the twenty-ninth year