On a Better Night

My fingertips map your face
Brows
Bridge of your nose
Cheeks
Bow-like lips above
A chin
Mounded like a wind-smoothed slope.

I brush a sweep of hair from your eyes
Curling fingers behind your left ear
Cupping it like a small conch shell
Your breath comes
As a midnight sea
Vapory, lifting toward stars.

Lying on your belly
Your graceful back
Rises and falls
Shoulders like sand dunes
Brown and unmarred
To the sloping oasis
The small of your back
Swell of your buttocks
Stretch of muscled legs
Feet cantered like exclamation points.

The essential you
Body of earth and salt
Hair like willow branches
Breath expelled as benediction.

How I would press you to my soul.
Like a potter his clay
A baker his bread
A farmer his seed.

Or make of you heat and light
Drawing you like an ember from the brand
Blasting orange
Sparking in the dark of my forge.

But I content myself in your sleep
As you await my touch
In deeper dream
On a better night.