There was the tenor of early summer

evening light, bright but subdued, and haze

of the slightest, smeary pre-dusk fog,

and I thought of you.  

                                    Pale blue poked through

mottled clouds, patterned and arcing like waves,

and smoothed itself over the distant ocean,

under the sun, and I thought of you, bare.

 

The coastal mountains lay to the south, faint

in the distance, muffled and in outline,

and I thought of you, bare, yet confessing

nothing.

               Dropping my gaze, I saw the trees’

startling green, the myriad hues of shadow

and shimmer, and I thought of your hazel

eyes, confessing nothing, clouded and bare.