Sonnet V

Sonnet V

I awoke with clear and honest eyes
to you -- the embodiment of soft parts
and soft words, to your singing in warm hallways --
to corridors smelling of your handiwork.

With your voice, the bread rises with the sun, golden,
the cherries sweetly drain at mid-day,
the potatoes murmur in their boil at dusk.
But your crowning lies in the after-glow

of pumpkin-spice along the apple-pathways,
plucking fallen fruit from the orchard floor
and dusting each as a child before they

rest in soft-piles at the road-side.
How we dance in the honeysuckle goodness of your
hands, how we take in solid joy by the mouthful.