On Needing Only One Thing

The bird sleeps in my bed, his slick wings

gorgeous in their black stillness, an oval

of the forest's fragrance spreading toward me.

He is breathing.  He is breathing and I am

not sure I can watch any longer the slash

of his eye not quite opening, but trying.

The bird sleeps in my bed, and soon

he will wake to reclaim his obstinate

flapping away.  I will not let him

abandon me.  I pull the sheet over our bodies

tenderly, firmly, and we sleep on and on.

I move in to touch his face with my face.

**

Born outside Paris, Rachel Contreni Flynn grew up in a small Indiana farming town and now teaches poetry and practices law near Chicago. Her first book, Ice, Mouth, Song, was published by Tupelo Press in 2005. Flynn is the recipient of an Artists Fellowship from the Illinois Arts Council and a 2007 Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. Her work has appeared in magazines and journals such as Barrow Street, Washington Square, Spoon River Review, Oxford Magazine, and Epoch.

Archived at http://lit.konundrum.com/poetry/flynnr_poems.php