two rings

After work, when my limbs hang heavy like pendulums

and my feet sink into the earth’s stone foundation,

you pick me up, pick me out, pick my brain, earnestly

hoping for a hilly, mountainous hike previously planned.

And although the sludge of weariness dangles from

my wrists like Graff Diamonds Hallucination,

you unearth smiles like precious potter’s clay

and soon we’re slipping through the rocky trees,

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my hand hooked to yours—like two pins hanging from a line,

determined to hold the same billowy white sheet upright.

The sun is dancing in the crests and platters of the mountains,

fracturing in your eyes that seem to be waltzing away with me.

I don’t notice the baby blue shirt with that clean laundry smell

that reminds me of you or a face cleaner than cut diamonds.

Other hill billies trot through the crust of autumn, a drifting crush

of people who seem to prance under your skin. If only the woods

were as lonely as the forests in fairy tales and picture books.

We gossip in lover’s language, steal sips from peak springs,

searching purposely for the fall colors as we fall for each other.

Arches of shattering, bursting fire color signal our arrival to you.

And as I murmur at the marvel, my back to you,

you spring, on edge for a turn, hardly capable of waiting

for sight to cement into realization as firm as the rock nestled

in black velvet.