Expectation

The Sleepers
Peter Didsbury

They lie on short grass,
in a place where whiteness
builds hedges to filter the blue,
nowhere more than a dozen yards away.

Time eludes them.
Passing clouds have stained their backs
with unfelt shadow,
but otherwise nothing has moved.

Their small enclosure is the perfect frame
for all that a lengthy posture can express
of love or of strangeness,
two hands of cards disposed by careful hands
face down upon the turf,
as if in the expectation of return.