A Morning Outing on May 1

This poem was written by eagleyez and Angeline

I.
Percolated up from wild color dreams,
Jacked on fresh ground cafe,
A string of errands on easy street.

We walk down rickety stairs under nip in air morning,
All smiles code talking syllables do just fine,
Off we go--me driving head north into town
Pharmacy first, she heads in while I finish smoking over paper,
Soon reading mags--Rolling Stone 40th anniversary issue, great interview with Dylan, Perry Farrell, Rage Against the Machine, talking summer festivals.

She buys Shampoo, nail polish in bright reds and pinks, until Scripts ready and we amble out 80 bucks lighter, slide along the roiling river swelled by snowmelt and nor’easter remnants, next stop Thrifway market for broccoli, another pack of smokes.

Churn south around the riverbend, town coffee hub, a stop for bagels and muffins, back on Main street ending the circle, she says "I know you love me, but you like me too, don’t ya." I smile and nod with one eye on her and the other on the road, non verbal knowing with a full tank of realization.
As we slide past the Country Club, all snow now gone, and hang a left into the driveway.

Up the rickety stairs, provisions in hand, I let her go first and she calls me a gentleman.

I toast my garlic bagel, sprinkle cayenne pepper on cream cheese, soaks up coffee quite nicely.

A day in the life, a moment in time, these days of first spring are of heaven born,
Me out in shorts and long-sleeved t-shirt,

Its music time, and I’m leaning toward something symphonic, Copeland it is--"Fanfare for the Common Man" with so much of the day still before us and we are glad for the time together evermore.

So it goes on the freedom trail...with a prank in mind to go kiss her with cayenne lips, and our tongues turn to talks brushing ever so sweetly, and yes hotly from the red ochre spice, but she's tough and feigns not knowing, and I wonder if her nipple would be so resilient against my heat.

Ravel's "Pavane for a Dead Princess" comes next, textured with aural color and we wash it all out in Debussy's "La Mer," the Sea boils up on battleship gray rocks.

A snippet of morning light and life, undercoated by joy and abandon, as the buds on many trees swell in violet and lilac and deeper lavenders.

Beauty in so many forms, gifts we exchange effortlessly, May is my month and I am lucky to find her so welcoming of my idiosyncratic vision, the way the cool air lays down upon my flesh, enough air to float the universe....across the connected sky.

II.
It's my month, too,
I have to remind him. He grabs the front
end of May, a tiger wrestling crocus buds and pussy willow into being, but I snap
with the tail of May's whip end,
slide us into June, snap with the snapdragons, digging the bee drone,
I dream coconut suntan lotion
served up with my birthday cake.

May spreads out before us, possibilities clear and limitless as a cornflower Maine sky bright with golden trompe l’oeil clouds painted on the horizon. We peer out the door, then thunder down the wood steps, and I never drive when he's around. "Just give him the wheel and he's happy" a friend of mine used to say and, my God, it's true. And I the equally happy navigator, the carryall for directions, cigarettes, lighters, sunglasses, diet coke babble as we bounce down Main Street, "we should get a bed with a bookcase headboard, don't you think? And a futon for the guest room I don't know what we'll do if the kids all come at the same time."

He's smiling, one eye on me rubbing his leg,
telling him the skin is too dry, he must
use the patchouli lotion I bought him.
His other eye studies the road, his ear
tuned to WZON, which is steadily trashing Terril Owen.
A brief lecture ensues:
football etiquette and Terril’s utter disregard for it.

The day proceeds.

We smooch goodbye even though he's just going next door
to buy a paper and smokes. He tells me not to buy green nail polish, and I threaten
to paint HIS toes L'Oreal Leprechaun No. 1,
but when I find him in the magazine aisle
I have only purple and pink for spring toes,
and he's lost in the latest Sports Illustrated.

It's true, we're in love,
we're in like. The best of both worlds!
The kissing heats and cools,
heats and cools, but the conversation
is endless and endlessly fascinating,
these plans and details mark our days,
each outing another brick in the home we build in our hearts, rock solid and decorated
with kindnesses; he opens doors for me,
I make him coffee. May stretches out before us in a line of promises we’ll keep, some solemn, some frivolous but all snuggled, treasured
in our joined warmth, a world that has grown from these words on a page, to voices, to bodies and now our oneness, joined at the soul.
Now us, and still the lilacs waiting to bloom.