— for Susanne
Wild Night,
after the cops came to shut the music down,
after friends and family were headlights
pointed toward home,
we washed down the last crumbs
of lemon cake with Prosecco
and blew out a hundred candles.
We inhaled the sweet summer smells
of lilies and fresh-cut timothy,
let our silk shirts fall on the bare pine floor,
and I lifted you as easily as music
raised from electricity and steel.
When our second party ended
and we held each other in the moonlight,
we could feel a soft south wind
touch our skin like another kind of song,
and we could hear the band under the tent
smoking on the makeshift stage,
their distant, dreamy voices comforting as parents
in the next room, or our closest friends
telling stories about the night
all of us learned to sing.
