OUR OWN BREATH stands roundabout us
by the door to the garden. We step into the rain
open its shirt: the air behind lies like
naked skin on the branches. It’s damp
and wet, the landscape threads your voice.
Droplets arch together with sky and lake.
In every word the earth turns, and you don’t know
how it looks at you beneath the noise of your tread
from out of your footprints, filled with subjunctives
and with sand. The centre shines, the multiplication
tables march ahead of us. I repeat: a man
and a woman and a blackbird are one.