He says to me Shh,
he quiets my wide eyes, rolls his thumb across my eyebrows,
presses his thin fox nose to my forehead;

he brushes my moss laden nethers, holds my left ear with whispers
about how the San Gabriel Mountains sang on his doorstep when he was a boy.

The shifting regions
of his piercing widow’s peak
dare to prick my heart as he descends,

a slow rumba of beats alerting my toes
to curl and squeeze, heat tightening around us.

After the sweat, I have dreams: I have a dream

of a Friesian steed
carrying the ghost of my unborn child across the moor.

I see

the hearth hold a fire, and behind it men and women with jackals dancing;
I feel the bump of the drums pound against my soles.

I wake and then can not sleep; I retreat from my lover and bed.
Silently I take my steps towards the door
that leads me out into the outside dark.

The pearl moon,
she’s as white as sugar,
sweet in the blackness, chill, and bite;
all of me blows into the wind. The night holds a needle

and I am balanced upon it, listening to all the tilting grasses cry.