LOVE SONNET NO. 69

What more divine
than breaths of pleasure
brought to doors
in gasps as linger
long and sticky, later
than an hour glass's simmering hisses?

It could be your kisses.

What more sweetly sings the hymn
that calls the seat of life from sleep
as water to the desert wanderer
home and welcomed in?

What luscious mouthings
say what means the meaning?

Words careening take the nothing
that they are and fashion arrows
flying toward the heart.

Is there any liquid full of measure more
than what we join together
in this joyous hour?

 

THE SECRET SUN

The secret sun runs backward 'cross the sky.

Waves remove their water from the shore,
and birds spit fish before swooning
to the clouds. Sand spits froth
and castles sprout where none had been before,
without human hands or bodies near.

A man walks backward from the dunes
and alone buries himself. A woman
unpacks remnants of lunch.

Two dry teens wipe themselves wet then
not looking at expanses - are pell-mell sucked to sea
atop the first wave of the day
and though we know they speak only English
call out loudly in some Slovak tongue.

The woman shouts three foreign words in their direction
before shaking and spreading an enormous blanket.

The man shakes immediately into sleep,
the weight of dampened sand upon his chest.

Sun-sleep presses the idea of beach heavy on him.

All moves slowly.

Yesterday is water weight.

Secret dreams run similarly in reverse.
He flies feet first, awkward, uncertain he will stay aloft.
The girl he pursues looks back and up every fifth stride.
Either way a film unfolds, numbers do not change
so that he always seeks and is sought by one
and there are always three.

The last of the sandwiches is bite by bite
reconstituted whole from the woman's mouth
and for a moment she is a mother bird
as she proffers it to the boys who add bites
to the rectangle of sustenance
before it is wrapped and tucked away.

For the longest time the couple is immobile
and the only movements are of boys washed in
and out on water, but then, they dig their father out and up.

It's only as they dig their mother swims or rather, floats
just beyond the breakers.

Time in reverse rotates quickly
on its wind-bent stem - a pinwheel bright and clear -
half flower grown from seed, half man-made.

enter the dickhead contest

the faux store Jan's word magnets