Summer Heat

A saxophone wails, soft and slow,
heating up the waning summer's evening,
sending out sultry tones
to caress the listening lovers.
The bass player plucks a beat,
deep and low,
throbbing in rhythm,
as the piano man's fingers
slide up and down the scale,
and the singer pleads, incessantly,
in silver alto tones,
and balloons waft lazily
into a star struck sky,
and all around us
lovers fold into each other,
responding to the beat, the wail,
the heat of the band.

Something Passes Through

Something passes through the fingers of friends
whose yearning for touch exceeds the instinct not to touch.

In warm sunshine, with arms resting on beach chairs
and crickets keeping rhythm to tidal lapping,
something sparks between those sun-warmed fingers.

Unlike the glacier-pressed body of Long Island,
the bodies of these friends are fluid;
they lean toward each other,
despite best efforts to remain apart.

Unlike the heavy, sea-smoothed granite boulders
sprinkled with sunbathers and riotous towel colors,
these bodies move--like the tide--toward, then away from, each other.

There is acute pain in that tidal movement--
the kind of pain that blocks the flow of life-giving energy,
the kind of pain that calls into question the confidence of friendship,
the kind of pain that does not pass through, but

something passes through the fingers of friends.