All flesh is as the grass

Hennessy.   you shoplifted.

this beach house, dim,

tracked now with sand.

walking home you made the rooms promise to be quiet.

he smells like the ocean at night,

or else it is coming through the doorway, the porch,

               has painted him with salt.

he tells you silver is not ash, but the metal of the moon,

the clothes we wear that fall off when we least expect it

               as the falling of light into a black bucket of water.

you tell him over dinner

that when you sing your heart expands, is exposed,

               and feeling the wind on it, you remember yourself.

that you want to become un-estranged to his voice,

               a voice like the repeated slip of a hand

                                                           into one that is waiting.

let him put his hands on you

in this place full of noiseless chatter,

this place of distant bees, or of a mind too close, too loud.

of the shells along your wooden desk.

one object just behind another,

stationary, wanting nothing,

but illuminated by its half-obscured shape,

                                           its likeness to yourself.

and when you glance behind you- your face

this time without so much lipstick,

               your hair loosely braided, the clean line of your jaw.

your naked bodies are in the doorway of this summer.

your rabbit eyes and the hallway – narrioch –

                                        the land without shadows.

nothing here is ever completely obscured,

               the landscape caught in an ocean glint-faced.

your fear and the Santa Anas wandering down from the hills.