WHEN SHE WAKES 

 

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she can’t find her body, and a bird whose name 

she doesn’t know startles 

the sky, beautiful

 

as afternoon snow, the first of the season,

falling on sun-warmed ground, snow

that melts as it touches the earth. 

 

How many lives can she live, she wonders,

inside these vivid moments, before

the dream is forgotten, called by the pull 

 

of the moon or the leap 

of the spider—one branch 

 

to another—a web of nerves that glistens

with dew at first light, and dries like the gradual 

wearing away 

of the days and the years, 

 

the gestures we wave at the darkness, to call

to no one watching from shore. 

 

*

 

The wind-birds that race the beach at the edge

of the foam as it reaches 

to grab them, the clouds 

 

that seem not to move for an hour, or a day, 

 

the way we look into each other, not meaning 

to see yet seeing: that flicker of loss, 

 

and are flooded with love, and with silence.

 

*

 

The moon drew a path across the lake 

as our swimming bodies 

disappeared into the darkness                                                                                         

even as they glowed like phosphorescence

 

and we dove as deep as breath, moving

under and around each other, like awkward  

 

seals transformed 

into animals whose bodies 

happened to be human.

 

Later, in bed: were they crickets or cicadas

that sang such haunting rhythms we couldn’t 

sleep but hummed 

all night with their voices 

 

as though they were singing 

inside our bodies 

 

as well as out there in the darkness?

 

*

 

Now she wakes from troubled sleep to nudge me 

lying beside her: 

It’s not like proof,

or adding two and two, but rather 

 

adding light to water. 

 

Look at how deep the sunlight pierces 

into the lake, the glinting fish 

 

and the darkness beneath. Then she lies back, sighs,

and falls away, back into sleep, while I carefully 

 

slip from the bed, gather my clothes

and leave her to dream through the morning.

 

*

 

All day I’ve been gathering branches from the path

and garden, carrying them down to the brush pile, 

talking to you, my love. 

 

I know the names of hardly any 

                                                                                               

of the flowers you planted, or how to care 

for many of the things you cherished most,

 

but I’m learning. Yesterday, riding

the electric bike we bought a few months 

before you died, which gave you such joy, 

I startled a wild turkey mother and her chicks

crossing the country road. 

 

I stood at a distance and tried to still 

my human chatter--but of course she saw me 

and hurried her chicks into the roadside grass.

 

Something in the slant of light across that grass,

something in the chortling chatter of the creek

that runs beside the road there, gleaming in the sun:

 

Slowly I’m creating the language I need

to embrace you, my love, in your absence.

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BIO: 

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​Michael Hettich’s A Sharper Silence, published by Terrapin Books in 2025, has been called a “heartfelt, heartbreaking collection” (Marie Harris).  His previous book of poetry, The Halo of Bees: New and Selected Poems, 1990-2022, won the 2024 Brockman-Campbell Book Award from the North Carolina Poetry Society. His poetry, essays, and reviews have appeared widely in many journals and anthologies, and he has published more than a dozen books of poetry across four decades. His other honors include several Individual Artist Fellowships from the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs, The Tampa Review Prize in Poetry, the David Martinson/Meadowhawk Prize, a Florida Book Award, the Lena M. Shull Book Award from the North Carolina Poetry Society, and the inaugural Hudson-Fowler Prize from Slant magazine at the University of Central Arkansas. His website is michaelhettich.com.

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