Come layer of prickle-sweat masking faces
Come the trickle into hollows, down the spine
sharpening each body's scent—

Come estival fêtes and fevers, sun-fired sidewalks
mountain haze as the high snows sizzle
and sublimate—

Come pungent breath off the shoreline
Come lift of mock orange, rosemary, lavender
Heat driven, bright in thickened air—

Come slow breeze to dry the grasses, boost the leaf,
velvet the night, cool the sheets, raise the scent
of the day's sun on darkening skin—

as layers of cloth thin to gauze.
Come the three a.m. hush and the dawn cacophony
of birds. The shush as your ankle

parts from mine, our backs just touching
as day folds over us like wings. Crimson wings,
afire for our resurrection.

Let there be day-long murmured words
not of parting till long past
the rust-brown curve to autumn becomes rain.