Eavesdropping

4 a.m.
and the swifts
over the house in the disappearing
dark, the swifts open-mouthed, ten,
twenty of them, thirty swifts now
and in every open-mouthed swift I picture
a heart the size of a hawthorn berry,
blood red to bursting those swift hearts,
thirty hearts in thirty swifts
over the house this morning where I stand
naked at the window, listening to my own heart –
perhaps the closest I will get to prayer –
and eavesdropping on the silence of the morning
where every swift is a black new moon upon the black mosque of the air.