Summer's
Lease
After
Sonnet XVII of William
Shakespeare
Nothing seems more summer
sinful
than to deliberately sleep
in an air-conditioned room
under a heavy quilt.
Like a visit back to
winter,
i taste pumpkin soup on my lips,
the thick puree, and smell golden
raisins and sweet cold weather spices.
i wear the little blue
cotton top you like,
its matching shorts discarded in favour
of white panties that echo the brief
triangle of untanned skin.
Everywhere my limbs touch
is cool smooth sheet
until suddenly your heavy thick hands
are behind me, on my hips
and rising at once to my breasts
making me gasp. This temporary room is
dim and chilly, removed
from hot-weather
routine. Still the papers are spread over the floor,
still the beaded lamp hangs on its chain
like a fantastic onion, refrigerated in darkness
so it will not sprout. But ready,
full of potential and incipient heat,
if only in glowing deterioration.
Your hands caress me as
you bend
to kiss my neck at the same moment
you pull my panties down my legs.
i think of coldness and heat,
of a single bare-topped mountain
straddling the equator. Of Kilimanjaro.
i remember being taught
that where the sea is coldest and deepest,
the boiling chemical soup erupts in streams
through cracks, through vents very near the centre
and is hot and forever the beginning of life.
~ Wednesday, August 8, 2001
(OK. Five days late, but at least I didn't forget, ST!
-dd)