© 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…
