Ode to Mr. Sunburn
Sunburn, the scorch of your touch
can make a girl wince long through the night
when your light, but not your heat,
has left me in the rumpled bed remembering how it felt
when you first appeared, when you tickled
and I did nothing to stop you. It’d been a long time
since you first came
for me that one afternoon, months
turning to seasons, the way a lover forgets
turning over the front door key but carries the brass
on his ring and I was full of the weeds
in the perennial garden when you stopped.
Said, hey.
Hey, you… in that voice, whispering
into my uncovered ears, my neck of too loose skin,
the backs of my knees, even the part of my grey hair, telling me
I matter, I can still be a woman
for you today and I do
still want you, pain proving me wholly alive
in the blush and searing
of skin so ready for you, so naked, lined and cracked
as the rock of devil’s mountain or the leaves
of summer dandelion torn open by feet.
Sunburn, I know so many others who feel the flare
on their skin and move, folding
like so many drab umbrellas hung
in the hall to never stay in the heat
but lose all contrast between noisy
and silent skin, never knowing what it feels like
to have their lips ache
from the lightest touch.
Mare Heron Hake is a co-owner and publisher of Tahoma Literary Review as well as poetry editor. A poet and writer of the south Salish Sea region in Washington, she watches when the crows fly and listens to trees. Her work can be found in various places, online and in print.
Read three poems by Mare Heron Hake previously appearing in Terrain.org.
