Night air

Air too hot to move hangs heavy,
darkness weighing,
between sight and wavering stars.

Air as hot as high summer
sighs among the trees, these nights,
in breathless whispering,

buoying on its billows, owls
that drift from glade to meadow
stroked by unseen hands.

Air, a river, swollen
with the sluggish sloth of tropics
and troubled depths,

yet I hear it, nights,
in wind ripples, restless,
ruffling the careless hair of the poplars.