Neptune 3/4
Hosing
You can see everything but the heat
in that old photo of me and my first Dad.
There were five concrete steps
up to the porch where we’d sit
with the scent of meat and gravy
lingering on the evening air.
It was a time of silence,
watching the sun click down
from smoky reds to purples
until a night blanket stirred the crickets
while Dad arced his hose
in figure-eights over the lawn.
‘Make me a rainbow,’ I’d beg.
He was all I knew of magic back then.
His lips would tighten as he said
rainbows couldn’t be bothered
with the son of a poor man
unless he spoke like a gentleman.
So I sang somewhere over the rainbow
way up high there’s a land that I’ve heard of
and he’d brush it in with a sweep of his wrist
and I’d dance in the mist he raised
to find his pot of gold, but it vanished
before I could bring it back.
Then the fireflies began to tease me
and I’d follow him like a cub
while he soaked the brick walls
and concrete path until they were
cool enough for me to sleep.
I can’t remember sweating in bed
at all on those sticky nights
when my father made it rain.
Firefly
To love you like that –
pulse of light at nightfall.
And your rainforest:
death adders random as dice
to keep intimacy on edge
your amber eyes inciting
afternoon’s purple thunder.
You sealed me in a drizzle
of discontent that wet season.
Suspicious of daybreak
you knew that undergrowth
sunlight would miss until
storms could leaden my wings.
Back then I had to be grateful
for any intuition of feral grass
beneath the perforated lid.
Charcoal dreams were all I knew
in those countertenor nights
before the pubic surge.