coupling...

walking home passed the little red house. the house where the barefoot berry brown kids used to chase white moths and hide in the hardingness grass and timothy in the long warm evening. no more. tonight the new young couple sits in the kitchen. the walls are fresh. the floor is bare. he wears no shirt. she has slightly more. she sits facing the window. he sits to one side. all eyes on the table. i pass slowly beneath the adjacent elm. lamppost angles from her treetop. crickets. the drake and the hen and the amber light.

"now i'm older gotta get up clean the place...now i'm darker than the deepest sea...just hand me down give me a place to be...now i'm weaker than the palest blue...oh so weak in this need for you..."
 

little bodies, little continents. cartography. oh that continents could fold, wings settling across the back. paired. at rest.