3 A.M.

It's 3 A.M. Love and lust and the secret juices are all sweated out of me. A streetlight knifes the window pane to clarify exactly one half of your face, closed like the moon with a secret of its own. Your hair is beautiful. On and on it goes, shimmering like some new electric mammal.

I picture you lying back wet and naked in a buffalo wallow, swathed by a blue halo of sagebrush and starlight. The coyotes dare not dance here. The snakes are filled with reverence; they keep their distance. Only the tiny white rabbit, fragile, shivering - filling itself again and again with its own breath - fearlessly approaches. Deftly it nuzzles your small breast, its shadow nestling soft over your white stomach, lit in the phosphorescent milk of the hovering moon.

It's 3 A.M. I watch your sleep, the clock a meaningless puddle on the wall.

Orig. 1990