Summer dons fallow for lovers such as we.
Our naked skins burnt bronze by the sun.
Beautiful like Egyptian Kings and Queens.
Our cattle sleek and fat and tall as the bulrushes.
The Nile overflowing its banks
as in any other year.

We reaped but did not sow
borrowing from bankrupt.
Mud caked into bricks.
Bricks that could kill if hurled like stones.
Stones we became. Another Stonehenge.
A megalithic monument for ritual purposes.

Stone faced. Stone silence. Stony ground.
Blood letting. Child burning. Dark incantations.
Our withered souls like a black spent fuse.
A discarded snake skin
that once was a green snake alive in the grass.

Nurture is the nature of everlasting love.
A hard working vine dresser
whose fruit is abundant and delicious
like a plump ripe plum.
Hail our fallow farmland!
Empty, barren, stagnant and unfruitful

If only I pruned your blushes.
If only I cultivated your smiles
and seeded your laughter.
If only I plowed your hidden valleys
and made static the sunshine of your mind.

Dormant is our doormat now.
A dream people wipe their shoes on.
A rainbow broken by the applause of thunder.
Winters breath flaring our nostrils.
A wintry blast frosting every windowpane
looking out over the last red, red rose of summer.