There are words remaining to be made.
Let us coin one for the dark between the stars—
that space which contains the rest of everything.
Now let’s conjure a single syllable for the spread
of my hand covering the width of my lover’s back.
Oh, and can we make a name for that
time in the middle of some days when everything stops
spinning, or one for the little cloud of gnats
that gowns the air before me in the woods,
or another for the daub of light on a leaf
illuminated by a single firefly?
I will make a lexicon for each today and say
it just to you. Every entry will be a conjugation
of awe, each a declension of the sorrow
that such nouns cannot exist
for more than that one moment
in which they are whispered.
*
Here, lean close as we become
one another’s breath. Breathe.
Say with me all the right sounds
and let your sigh run right through me
and back out to become
that space between the stars,
my fingers splayed across your back,
the air stirred by the beat of a single gnat’s wing,
a small daub of light.
–
Dick Westheimer lives in rural southwest Ohio. He is winner of the 2023 Joy Harjo Poetry Prize and a Rattle Poetry Prize finalist. His poems have appeared or are up-coming in Only Poems, Rattle, Abandon Journal, and Stone Poetry. His chapbook, A Sword in Both Hands, is published by Sheila-Na-Gig.