Birds Command the Dawn

In the full light
of a summer’s day
is where I never go.
I miss that way

the summer glow,
what the still winds say,
what the mighty sun demands.

And, as the birds believe
they command the dawn,
I tend to my deception
that what I miss is no way there.

Rocket Science

It was the different leaves
of a different tree
rustling in the wind
a millennium ago.

Or a millennium ahead, as if
now and then mattered.
I was the first woman
to say no, or the next,

as if refusing to be property
set some kind of record.
But this is my story of yes,
of laying myself down

on my cushion of gathered moss.
Of laying myself
between earth and sky
while a swell of crickets

kissed the breeze around us.
Our hearts fluttered with the rise
of a second swell and soared
with the music of different birds

in the different bushes nearby.
To this man I did say yes,
yes, as his breath feathered my thighs.
Hunting by scent, arriving at the

crack of my dawning,
of his awakening
into a different time
of manhood and glory.

Coming together at a bonfire
of young memory,
the fluid crescendo
of our rocket works,

briefly forgetting she who I alone will deliver
(though she will one day launch
poems to the stars).
We sang to each other.