Part of the Landscape

I know a place by the river
under ash and linden where

the leaf mould is soft as a feather bed.
There in the heat of the afternoon

my body was part of the landscape.
It opened and listened

to the song that bathed it round:
longing and repose

velvet and dreamlike
back and forth in endless variation

between a pair of shy brown birds
I only later knew were nightingales.