"Given" and "Pericardium," by Joanna Klink

Given

And I carried to that emptiness
between us the birds
that had been calling out
 

all night. I carried an old
bicycle, a warm meal,
some time to talk.
 

I would have brought
them to you sooner
but was afraid your own
 

hopelessness would keep you
crouched there. If you spring up,
let it not be against me
 

but like a weed or a
fountain. I grant you
the hard spine of your
 

childhood. I grant you
the frowning arc of this morning.
If I could I would grant you
 

a bright throat and even
brighter eyes, this whole hill
of olive trees, its
 

calmness of purpose.
Let me not forget
ever what I owe you.
 

I have loved the love
you felt for those gardens
and I would grant you
 

the always steadying
presence of seeds.
I bring to that trouble
 

between us a bell that might
blur into air. I bring the woods
and a sense of what lives there.
 

Like you, I turn to sunlight for
answers. Like you, I am
not sure where it has gone.
 

Pericardium

Am I not alone, as I thought I was, as I thought
The day was, the hour I walked into, morning
When I felt night fly from my chest where prospect had
Slackened, and close itself off, understanding, as I thought I did,
That the ground would resist my legs and not let them
Break nor let them be released into air as my heart, in its
Muscle, might be released from the body that surrounds it, 
Like someone who, placing a hand on a shoulder’s 
Blade, felt a life move inside an hour and a day 
Break from the day the hour meant something more than weakness, 
More than fear, and flew forward into the depths of 
Prospect, your arms, where you’d been, before me, waiting
For me, the way the body has always been waiting for the heart to sense  

It is housed, it is needed, it will not be harmed.