On Nights Like This

Published in Lost in Tall Grass (Finishing Line Press 2014)

On nights like this,
when a warm wind shakes the trees and fences,
kicks leaves and litter down the street as it passes through,
I wonder if the bench is still there, in the
cobbled square where we sat and
you were still just for a moment,
letting the darkness enfold us.

Laundry snapping, shutters rattling,
mini tornadoes of leaves and twigs and dust swirling around us,
our faces each turned into the wind,
smelling where it had been,
where it was going,
I watched you greet it like it was your lost twin.

But I loved it anyway.
How could I not?
And that you let me hold onto the moment if nothing else,
name it, invoke it when sundowners gusted through smelling of sage and piñon,
sing-song “it’s your weather tonight” to the open door,
knowing you would turn and smile,
our tender branch extended and taken, extended and taken.   

On nights like this,
I follow the creek to the sea,
the alders sighing under the bend of a land breeze,
step into the cold surf and think,
all there is between us is an ocean.
It’s your weather tonight, I call to you,
carried to sea on a warm night wind as
the last glow melts into a thin line where ocean meets sky.