July 5, 2011

after fireworks (1)
 
When the sky goes black again and the neck resettles on the trunk.
When mothers fold the blankets back to quarters and fathers lift
limp children to their backs. When the last of the beer has been drunk
and the bottle flung into the trash. When teenage lovers shift
from their gluey intimacy in time for a parent’s ride home. When
a chill ruffles those warm bodies. When the carnival’s unsold wares
are heaved into the bed of a pickup and the men
who wrestled the livestock in descend into the pens with glossy stares.
When the flicker of a sunburn finally imprints the skin.
When we return to where we left off, and start again.

after fireworks (2)
 
And we remember what electricity is, explosions rocking the matte sky,
our hopes, tumescent to magnificent proportion, flagrant with delight,
leaping full-throated into the great river of desire. How easy,
then, to consider the wholeness of things, the circle of us linking in light,
the world divining our good fortune with the deep booming of a bass drum.
If we stood there for a moment, we would hear the echo of it long past
show’s end. If we held our gaze against the darkness, we would come
to recognize what we had thought unseeable – love so hungry and vast
it could blanket us eternally. All I want is to hold us still enough to let
our lungs find their right rhythm. For the bones of us to set.