The Soft Rest
So Slowly

Lapwings drape themselves over breath,
their lungs like trunks or species
whose quiet thumbs

cause no trouble. The others
build consensus. In movements
conjugal, butterflies remember a childhood

inches from spring. Birds' bodies trance
a capillary flood, in months
and wings. A lapwing wavers, delves

canescent as walls, tired and white
between ceilings, marzipan-sticky
with silence.

The body rasps against
gravity's pull,
a lone clupeid.

If deep is absence
of unfolding, now is having
been unfurled.

—John Myers