Speak to Me

[71degrees]

An any less severe goddess
would have turned
the other cheek
when I attempted
a temptational hand
to the nape of her thin neck

Her eyes blushed me off
with a look that shook
me to the bottoms of my Levis:
loose change, half stick of Juicy Fruit,
and an abused Bic lighter

8-track of my ’70 Bel Air playing
Chicago’s Greatest: tenor sax singing
to itself like a lonely phone

Memory is often quaint but I swear
she wanted me to stop when she said
she had never danced to color my world
so we slowed and we stopped
and we did and we danced
at the intersection of London Square Road
and somewhere

Other passers paid no heed; maybe two people
dancing beneath stars was too common;
we twirled, her neck exposed her head
on my shoulder my hands settling on her
like sand in an overturned hour glass

After no words she smoothed her hair, rain
damp, nothing more than wet like her lips

And now sometimes when I’m night driving
and I hear tenor sax, I will stop at an intersection,
dance, and bay at the moon like the primidorial dog
must have the night god deemed Adam was lonely