Samuel Day Wharton

After the Big Bang

at 2am

         lying awake

I imagine disaster

         a plane crash

an assassination

         bombs under bridges

(our sun too young to collapse / the universe expanding

         at speeds too fast to imagine

none of it comforts me as much

         as your hand at my side

your breath at my neck

         dogs at our feet)

as helicopters swirl in the night sky

What’s Your First Bird of the Day?

someone asks      & I look

immediately, though it’s mid-

day, out the windows

at the house-finch

it’s roseate likeness hanging

off the evening primrose

seeding the ground

around the fig tree. I look

with all my eyes      the ones

fully covered by salt-

moss & the ones my niece

gave me in hopes of clearer

weather. Inches away, steady-

handed D. takes a blade

to the straggling morning

glory in my hair. The furthest

I’ve been in this memory

is dawn      & there they are

every morning: the mourning

doves in pairs, there pecking

through the redwood mulch

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Samuel Day Wharton makes wine & writes poems in Sacramento CA. Recent work has appeared (or will appear) in Stone Circle Review, the engine(idling, The Shore, Some Words, & Poetry Is Currency. You can find him on Bluesky here: @fakeourway.bsky.social