i breathe deeply    then close my eyes
and you come into my room.
on a summer day     wild grass has fingers of a song
beneath your feet     are the days we had years ago

no   please don't laugh at me.  i have had sacred moments
let me have some   with you
don't mumble    or crack a joke
no no     that's only part of what   i need

sunbathing on a green carpet  woven completely of light
i thought you liked      the poet   in me
rocks don't really understand    all the things i love
only   those dust motes   in the light      are my kin

love spreads in all directions    like a breeze
that starts with you    yet also dreams beneath your breath
and is forgotten   not far away   but beneath the surface
or even very far away    walks into a room that yearns for you
even though you have never entered it

why do the geese cry
and mountains slouch forward
why does the sky pour fire at midday
why are there so many of us who have forgotten how
to praise those we love

why is your name carved into
this damn fucking rock ledge, why
was kilroy never here,  why are the powers
of friendship so persuasive?

 you tell me.

human bites are up 23% this year,
and dog bites are down.

why is the earth shuddering under
its growing weight of concrete?
we are not far from what holds us--
it's no worse than face-to-face distance.
i've had that, haven't you?

(memory : when i visited Father in new hampshire,
after six-course dinners, i would  tiptoe
out to feel the dewy crisp of leaves,
weigh apples in the palm of my hand,
bobbing the branches. i thought i saw
a shadowed face watching me from the window
while i climbed thick
limbs with chinese etiquette, riding
the heavy wood like a lady, legs
swung over to one side;

the rest of this poem has nothing
to do with Father,) except for
the hereditary heart disease of passion
and decorum.
...................................................

side-saddle is only one of the ways
i want to ride you, baby
while

unborn sounds are torn from my throat
in a wild gallop impossible to reign in
on memory-foam pillows.

impaled on the splinter between dreams
and waking,

i think of fingers, hands gripping
the small of my back;  the sides of my waist.
i lean against the wall, spent, legs too shaky
for walking away now

the relief of cloth pulled off.
your hands
drawing my hands down to you.

i stroke

and then

i mouth you.

i will show you  but you already know
how i move, groan,
lift my hips insistently
in  a love of rhythm--

how i yawn.

we can do anything and everything in dreams,
nothing is impossible.

the silver edges of your gaze
have cut my heart in two

you own me now
in the place where
it's always warm

i long to be a poem
on red paper,
a softly haunting verse
opening my thighs

in a sinuous invitation