Our Own Making

I Call it Waking
I call it waking as if it is new. Each time morning
light is in pieces: each time an open window like
spring again: this time like nothing might change.
I am slow before noon. I know the hum of these
cicadas as if
nothing ever was before.
I am swallowed; I become
comfortable. I love the wind-hum sound of
the almost-but-not tropical storm / how you call it
a home as if
something about it might last.
This house, this window facing the highway
facing the cul-de-sac, and all of it sung
(the white-winged dove
the northern mockingbird
the fragile carolina wren)
into being. I miss this preemptively.
Under the pressure of rain I and everything will soften
as if to break would be the easier thing
(and only then, fold over the window’s edge
and only then, dream).
I’m but an outline on the other side of the glass, and after
four years of waking to the sounds of living
trees, their bodies heavy
with the birds and cicadas, I am heavy and I
do not know how to leave.