Rest with Me

Rest with me.
The guns are slowing—

the stiller they are, the more quiet,
the darker it gets.

The nerves in our eyes also settle.
The explosions float down to breathe.

I have a place for your head
here.

Lower yourself against the bay
I call an arm.

Tip your eyes in towards me.
I’ll dress your chest with the lace of my fingertips.

Fingers? Lips.
My lips will be a thin shadow on your skin

like a bruise from the sun, like the new white grass
on a burnt mountainside, still smoking in places.

I have seen eggs shook loose from dead birds,
rickety heartbeats inside the hollows,

the slow, regular complaint from a rocking chair,
and the echo becomes the baby.

Sarah McCann earned her MFA at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop and has been published in such journals as The Bennington Review, Margie, and Hanging Loose. A book of her translations of the Greek poet Maria Laina, Rose Fear, is forthcoming from World Poetry Books.