—a found poem: Virginia Woolf’s The Waves
I feel the bruised cry of birds in my body
when I wake.
Thinness rushes my pink imperfect heart
and I am cast down at another day—
hands and feet and body.
Here is idleness, brown water, disgrace.
The sun is yellow and laughing
leaves stir and patter across the lawn
and I long for darkness and sleep—
its brass thud, its pirouetting slam.
I lie here and watch the bedroom
harden into night.