In September's salt-crusted skin
and vermillion-tinged drop cloth,
when the air boiled
with the double-winged helicopters
of the sugar maple, we spent the night
projecting barking dogs and mice
with grins onto your bedroom wall
with our hands. Streetlight fell on us
in stripes of Egyptian blue
through the window--your body a figure four
and mine sneaking a sweetheart's cradle--and even now
in mid-February it's still September.