Teetering Lullaby - Dean Young

Come to rest my darling,
the trees are autumn-twinged
the ocelot of my mind if out
would rest in the long grass.

Comes to rest the bus in hydraulic
exhalation, a puppy-scamper wind
finds itself over water and rests,
rest the future fires rushing,
rest the past ash.

The heart’s
adumbrations of bees may never
cease, not the hopeful hum
or peevish sting but rest I would
my hand upon your breast, sleep I would

above the troposphere. No accounting
for your beauty moving through me
like a branch, a sigh coming from under
the squeaky remnants of the old barn.

Whatever’s buried there that once caused
such alarm has come back to forgive,
to apologize for how it all went wrong.

So rest my darling, the journey’s almost
over even though I’ve gone nowhere
and never meant to stay there.