Dehydration
The air is dry, and so am I within.
We set our clocks to standard time, and yet
the temperature’s too warm for fall. My skin
is parched to paper and I’m wet with sweat
but nothing else: no dew nor fog nor rain.
The autumn scatters dryness on the street;
it fills with curling leaves each gutter drain,
and showers brittle limbs about my feet.

As dry as California autumn air
am I, and arid as a turning leaf.
My crazing skin and barometric hair
confirm the low humidity. My grief
is little, flitting like ideas, while I
am thirsty for emotion, and too dry.

Rehydration
The silver globes on pyracantha gleam
from oval leaves and berries nearly wine.
The fog is sterling in the argentine
of stainless overcast, and puddles shine
like mirrors, silver glancing on concrete.
These tones appear as silences around
the sucking kiss of tires on the street,
for showers daily saturate the ground.

My leather-torsoed daughter walks toward me,
her face awash with tears. Her choking voice
is silver as she questions ardently
how anger dwells in sadness. “What’s a choice
for artistry?” she’s crying in the rain,
“and why does fury permeate my pain?”

Sweat
The sweat infatuation can produce
is nervous ichor: pungent in the nose,
conspicuous, and hostile to the clothes
the aspirant selected to seduce.
The sweat of sex is messy. Damp and loose
the bellies slap, the quick saliva flows,
the tongues entwine, a sliding passion grows:
a duel, a dance, a tempest, and a truce.

The sweat anxiety is sour stuff.
As if the body wept from every pore,
as if the skin could grieve about the death
of love, we sweating know we’ve had enough.
We mop our skin and dreams. We close the door
on promises that never drew a breath.