Sea Flower

When the clock chiming two or three wakes me
I am peering into the darkness and the dark
of your hair. Nowhere we are touching
but there, my eyelashes repeatedly threaded,
soft tangle on my brow. I can hear you breathing
the night into water, some anemone or sea flower
washing in a current no human eye can behold.
I wonder why sometimes the clock’s regular bell
eases me open, ear and eye, and how
sleep so often seems to me then a kind of swimming.
No insomniac, I sleep again
but always try to savor the moments before,
when the body floats free of itself and floats,
then flows all night in its oceanic breathing.