and smell the lurk of growth in humid air
I see the half moon orange against the heat
and smell myself, my sweat, my sticky hair.
I feel the sprinkler push a lazy song
arranging colors on a spotted earth.
It steals the time away from summer’s wrong.
It tries to make of natural death a birth.
And when this splash of night can meditate
and strike the skin with sounds that utter soul
as if the force of breath could hesitate
and make a moment of an empty whole
it’s then I tell my dog that we are one
and bend to kiss her head and let her run.
