My love, my love, my love – JohnCarl McGrady

It’s five o’clock in the morning 

Sometime in the haze of August 

(Not so late that reality encroaches 

With marbled notebooks and Ticonderoga pencils) And I am awake— 

Ostensibly, to see the sunrise but 

I am awake to see you 

Or, to hear your sleepy voice as you 

Drag yourself from your quilted bed 

(To see the sunrise, but you can’t see it for hours) 

The tall hemlock you love, 

That your neighbours will cut down to plant hydrangeas, Which you will hate because they guzzle water, 

Blocks the sun until seven thirty, 

eight o’clock 

But we pretend portends of tending dawn, 

Excuses to lie in soft dewy grass 

And whisper through crackling 

Twelve-dollar earbud microphones 

And make distant love from different states 

These are the glimmering times; 

We rise with the sun, to the heavens 

And are anointed twice 

By Helios and Aphrodite 

As celestial fire meets the fire of— 

I don’t know what you wear 

On the grass among the strawberries 

And the picture of your teeth in their 

Soft flesh, your soft flesh in my teeth 

Is an illusion of my sun-soaked mind 

But I can feel you through the pastel sky 

I know your touch, but I have not 

Felt you. Not once

So we murmur in the dawn 

And I pretend I’m watching the sunrise But I’m really watching you