We lie down in this green field growing more green whose future the summer awaits.

Light on living hands, paws, hooves. Light coating the hills, meadows, houses.

If nothing else, believe in light, that it will return, even in destruction,
muzzle flash or incendiary device.

Wind arises briefly, remapping the grass, crowns of trees, and reminds us
of those bodies we can’t touch now, bodies

gone. One returns, carrying a bowl of something vast but without weight.

In sleep I peer into the bowl where years are dissolving into days and hours,
where within the minutes, seconds begin to twitch like minnows

until a mirrored glare forms and an infant cries—an ocean’s waves coursing
through its small limbs—and in those moments, signs become

words and I hear a faint whistling through all the vowels.