691. somewhere, an owl

They drank coffee in bed and read poems. Each line was held and weighed, each verb measured twice, each noun fitted for plate, poked for weakness, then set aside in a pile. He read then she read. Then they read again, standing, to see if in standing the poem became something different. And it did. So they took the words and threw them into the air, swirled them as water between fingers, drank of their sweet adjectives and those little cousin adverbs. And they did this all day long until candles took them to supper, to bed, to the readings of night, of poems that breathed as they breathed, wore mood as the sky did clouds, and what was form and what was function and what flew and what walked mattered not, as plot mattered not, as the bird cares not, knows not of flight but for the flying; and her head on his shoulder, and his lips upon the page and the rustle of clean sheets was all and none and yet more than all and less than none as the vessel before and after port. And with the last flickers, sleep came, ink and paper staining cloth and fingers, as dogs too in the bed and on the floor and in this way their days became their nights as warmth beget warmth under the roof, under the sky, to the sound of night and the stream and somewhere, never seen, an owl.