Flotsam Dreams of Jetsam
You and I float naked together
down a snow-melt stream.
The icy-green water teems
with deliquescing pine needles
and shattering sun, steeps spearmint tea
in our open mouths and ears and noses.
We’re smeared across each other for warmth,
tangled up like fractured stalks of lilium
or the tendrils of slack-tide jellyfish;
pale, goose-pimpled flesh strung
tan-stretcher tight over shivering sinew.
My hands ripple up your legs,
down your back, across your stomach,
all worn smooth and warm as chapel glass
after morning mass, during April’s dirty thaw.
Your soggy-straw hair has crimped
a rainy-Rue-de awning over your eyes.
I wonder if they’re even in there,
if you even see what’s coming.
Step back, somehow,
and we’re labs without collars,
one chocolate, one yellow.
One dog says to the other
“I love you,”
his voice gargling with it.
But she cuts
a little half-smile
and shakes her head,
“you love the water.”
