Lairs

Lairs

Thaw delayed, at home
the fireplace stuttering until May.
The couple next door were like us

reassured in the cold while firelight
gilded the dim and hollowed reaches
of their winter house.

When the season yielded abruptly,
bright evenings parsed them in relief
           man / woman / lawn

the heat growing hateful, refusing
to leave. It skulked in the garden
and sucked the lavenders dry

until only an occasional wind vexed
them to sudden vitality: flower pulps,
leaves like razors, coarse stems

that tangled in perfidies
neither he nor she confided.
           man / woman / lawn

and dinner al fresco on the patio:
their tongues ladling filmy spoons,
later puddled in the kitchen sink;

around the joint where spoon-bowl
meets its handle, lips puckering
like garden soil clenching a stem;

and circling their pale waning bodies,
a threaded cyclone of heat
drilling the lurid sky.