Poetry: To Morning

{Originally published in the Spring 2022 issue of VoiceCatcher}

To Morning

Morning. verb. 1. To wake another by crawling into bed, laying one’s head of their abdomen, and holding them around the waist. “He awoke each day to find her morninging him.”

Unfair almost how we wake—

sun or shadow

bird song or rain,

alive again to pleasure.

You beside me, waiting in sleep

(dog needing out;

farmhand arriving)

and I morning you.

Sometimes by midday I miss you.

Parallel lives, different domestic

domains; prescriptions of a day,

the demands of provision

—so much to do besides loving.

Then again, night. Goose-flesh on my neck

as you stroke hair from my shoulders,

trace the S-curve of thigh and hip.

Some mornings the wanting is quickened

by absence, and I morning you more

as I hear it.

Hair of your belly

on my face,

sweet smell of your skin

in my nose,

I think of when your body

as only a memory

will remain.

The absence encroaching like a train

heard long up the track, miles

before visible—quiet at first

then ever louder.