I do not know what it is that closes me:
there is the last, feeble moment of dark
before the flickering ruins of light
jostle the stars into their daily solitude
...(why won’t you stay just a little longer,
the night is not yet through, the cold
has not yet passed into history)

And the infant has his bated breath
before his first gargled utterance,
his consonants pulled from fires in caves
and troubadours singing in stories,
pulled from incoherence into love

What is it that closes me like a cocoon?
In my city’s stillness, in my writing’s blankness,
in your vermiculate hands warming my ears.
We stop before parting in the morning.
The city waits in the gloaming, not quite able
to summon its voice;
........................................... your sleeping body,
curled and splayed like rivers and streams
on the vast and green and distant globe,
will stay mysterious, unwound of its meaning
for a moment longer, before I open,
and with my first words after waking,
trace the indents of your spine

*(I want to credit EE Cummings and Cormac McCarthy for some of the material in the poem. Also, the "..." are because I could not figure out how to properly space this poem, and felt the spacing was important.)