Into the open arms of the doors of the barn, smell of hay, like sweet tea, and cow manure, sweet, weedy, like the smell under the deck of a lawnmower, here, let’s walk to the back, where the doors are also wide open to a stormy sky. Here, a percussive wave of thunder pounds the ground and our ears. Rain is beginning to tinkle on the tin roof. Tink! Tink! Tink tink!
Close your eyes. Feel the warmth of the summer wind, smelling earthy with rain. Feel it tickle the hairs on your arms. Feel alive, with me.
We see a flash through closed eyelids, and a sudden fright comes over us. But the lightning was far enough off, and the light, only a flash. But wasn’t it beautiful, how it turned our closed, dark red eyelids into blue disks?
Here it comes, with our eyes open, now, the band of rain, marching over the rolling green field and bouncing off the turf like little glass beads of pop-corn. It sweeps over the gentle slope, and around the gum trees with their star shaped leaves turning greener as they become wetter. I can smell the pungent odor of the gum trees. It is acrid and sweet at the same time, funny how so many things out here is something and sweet. Like the smell of your hair, the shampoo still perfuming it. I could fall asleep in that smell, but right now, life is washing itself, and in a few hours all will sparkle as if it were brand new. Do you ever feel brand new?
After all these years, over a plate of yellow-dotted white rings, scooping egg up, laughing, you’ll say the oddest thing, and the years are washed away, and you are brand new to me. How much I love you, when you least know it. Like now.
The storm rumbles overhead, and the wind slams drops of rain onto our skin. We move back, even with the empty stalls, where the hush in them is amplified in us. What wide eyes you have, and how they soak in the simple, and make it a dream come true to see. Then, the rumbling moves on, and past us, past the house, the red rooster mailbox you made, and past the last tall tree at the end of the muddy driveway. A chill comes, and I know in a few hours, we will cuddle up on the couch, become warm under a blanket, and begin to nod off until we sense a growing tenseness in each other and your hair will call to me, and I’ll run my fingers through it. We will taste each other’s lips, and hands will find the sweet spots we both know so well.
I hear, through the slightly open window, the last of the rain dripping off the roof and onto the little gravel pits below. The kissing is causing me to lose my hearing, and my gaze is lost in the moving picture of you, before me, smiling, tasting me, holding me, kissing me, and even now, after all these years, my tummy is nervous and I swear, it feels so wonderful.
medasane 