While You Were Sleeping Poem by Steven Federle

The sun has not cleared
my neighbor’s house yet.

His high trees glow
golden-green, nodding slightly
in the morning breeze,

but he is not about,
probably sleeps
deep in still rooms
curtained and shuttered,
easily breaths
unaware

of the deep chorus
swelling in the brightening sky,
mourning dove and
mocking-bird, jay and sparrow
and clicking hummingbird
singing into being
the new day;

but I see
and I hear.

I’ll tell him
what he missed.