THE BRIDGE Poem by Leanne O’Sullivan

I want to stay with you tonight, as light unhusks
and spills slowly from the half-moon,
where I am lying curved beside you in the dark.

I know you by touch, our bodies finding the other,
kiss by kiss, like birds flying in pattern, a tiny shape of God -
breast to breast and legs intertwined.

Your flesh glitters, shadowless, round droplets
rising in dew. I cannot be near enough.
I remember the first night our skins were this close,

after a day of rain, a bridge shining behind you
in the blind wilderness. I heard the crunch
of leaves under my boots, the distant heartbreak

of a bird's small cry as I moved closer to you,
one half of a creature midwived out of the dark,
trails of goose-pimples along my skin.

Months later I think of it, leaning against you,
as if on the lip of a boat, and the clouds
unloosing their nets until the full rain came again,

moving everything in one direction, tremendous as a cell
and brushing against the whole nerve of my body,
in the dew hours, your lips on my forehead.