Friday, September 30, 2005

The Pressure of Calm Heat

Sometimes
the pressure and heat
of your casual touch
feel to me
as your daughter will feel them –
the assumed assurance of them,
the unconscious stability
of your love.

I pocket these moments
of science fiction future
and try not to bank
on the currency
of our present circumstances.

There are dishes to do,
words to write,
and fights to work toward
at our daily jobs,

and I know your attraction to me
is unthinking,
past a growing awareness
that we enjoy each other’s intelligence
even as we share little information.

Still,
the calm of your heat in the mornings
beckons like a desert mirage
not open to business for me –
thirsty wayside traveler
who reads in the clouds
the length of my personal drought.

When the wind
has erased the last of my footsteps
in the sand,
I will follow the sidewinders' path
to someone else’s heat.

This coin of your calm in my pocket
will tarnish with my thumb’s print.
Maybe it will buy me time
to believe the next one can love me
in a wide open glow
that stays.

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