~

Four years from the memory of water

I watch

as you bake cookies

Your pensive industry concentrated, I

 stand silenced

by the gray distances you favor.

~

In our own ways

we are both tempted by sweetness.

~

I have already learned to adapt

to the rhythms of living in the abstract.

Engagement

not being within the code

of your weather.

~

So when you are busy elsewhere

I look in the cupboard

to find

one cup of sugar

intending to make the earth

sweet.

~

dirt    sugar    water

seeming the perfect alchemy

baking all afternoon

on an old tin

in the white heat sun oven

off the porch

~

The flower swollen and car exhausted air

seduces me

I gasp in the embrace

~

When it is time

my cookies still

taste like dirt.

But I am less interested

in this wounded conjunction

than the fine film

of sweat

that covers me.

~~

“”””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””