Through a golden-amber hue of softened rays of dawn
with a hint of butterscotch rising on the baked back
gently hardening in the warmth, naked silk spun outstretched
reeled into a statuette, naked and glowing eyes half-open to a yawn
seemingly as innocent in her natural state as an unapproached fawn
she wraps herself in robes, descending from her attic
each step down seemingly brings right now closer
until the morning-do of Artemis in Eden is gone
by noon she is a toiling man in the den
by night he lays decay beneath his feet with every further step along
down the gravel drive, back up the lush and grassy lawn
leaving frost where her hair like wheat, ran all the way down to her heels
and touched the blades in days beyond,
a trail, tread, treacherous and dead lays cold in the steps
that lead up and down, where a rapturous child's laughter resounds
in harmony with a christening of an affair between the soul of man and a bitter hound
there, surrounded by the crickets, cicadas, and all the nightlife in the air
nothing on the property square, as if to suggest this were cleared by forces in nature
a hallow, or hallowed ground?
Once she whispered into his ear as he sat in the dark, uninterred
and even as stoic as he was, the closeness is what stirred
her hands were his or his were hers,
merciless and precious, left and right, run the fawn
they were disturbed by the conclusions that were drawn
roaming back and forth from night to day, lingering over the middle as the sun
mother giving birth and raising man to father daughter to give birth to mother
the loading of life into death, six bullets into a the six chambers of a loaded gun
the romance of morning blended with the fear of these nocturnal goings-on,
walking hand in hand with a shape in shadow, never to understand there was always only one.