White Cotton Curtain, Outdoors

This is the wind’s shape,
the sound of jasmine;
the river’s touch as it billows
down the valley:

how solitude smells,
how quartz tastes when you’re
down on your knees;
the last breath of the fox’s kill –

the sleep of the barn owl,
the curve of the egret’s wing in flight;
the size of your shadow
as it disappears over the hill.