Summer Sudden

© 2012 Steve King

All rights reserved

…then evenings

and leisured memories

of each receding day,

bright and perfect,

brilliant mirrors to our sly designs

no matter how we chose to look at them.

Slow slipping to twilight,

faces turned to painted masks,

purple in encroaching shadow,

bared limbs unweathered by the lateness.

We knew it was no longer spring

no matter what the calendar implied.

It seemed the change would never come,

sun would never leave us

to abandon and dark dreams,

whisperings and star-lit conjurings;

our silence at the last

amid the calls of crickets,

and low insect hums,

other shadowed harmonies,

gathered in dark corners

of the shrinking day.

Dense air made wet the tall iced glasses,

leaving dew on ready hands,

teasing ready lips with thoughts of quenching,

quenched lips taunting ready ears,

sighs of easy promise,

leaving for the moment

all prospect of renewal or regret.

All ready.

Rings clicked on the cold glasses,

jeweled facets in rose sunsets

glimmering like lesser stars

as hands moved through shadows

back and forth in fading light;

painted lips curled for the sipping,

tongues for languorous rolling

of all bright sensations;

heat and summer air,

all breath enfolded,

words poised for saying,

if words would even serve a purpose

in the long twilight;

if words would substitute for sensations

waiting close upon the tongue;

if words would better serve the tongue

than soft summer bites,

dark appetites there waiting to devour

the ripening fruit of lingering summer nights.

The scent of perfumed bodies

swift touching,

sudden feeling,

all unspoken accident,

that needn’t be explained,

wouldn’t be undone (how?)

by words or faint regrets

unsuited for belief

or even for remembering,

(how might it be undone?

how could they be undone?).

It was the season made us move,

could not escape the touch,

the scent

the feel;

wondering of one’s own scent

and how to touch

and what to feel

and what to say;

endless twilight fading slow

to ease all pleasure and repose.

Yes, summer indeed.

Just summer.

And the guard was down,

because by then we held nothing

not gladly surrendered.

Summer.

Just summer.

Season of long twilight

and brimming retrospect,

though briefly were the morrows

presaged in each rising moon,

light breaching that horizon,

looming ever larger,

casting our faint shades

through the blaze of magic lanterns.

I wondered of the morrow,

small dreaming of another day,

the long wait for new twilight,

new games to play.

I wondered of tomorrow…

still nothing beckoned from beyond,

save moonlight falling empty;

tired shadows fled across the vacant lawn,

while magic lanterns guttered

one

by

one…