After the Party

   - 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.