Deliberate
on the rabbit,
who if what you
hear is half true
has found the way
to inhabit
a world without
elaborate
courtship, yet one
flushed with piquant
concupiscent
satisfaction,
a world whose slack
meadowed moments
sit suspended
between frequent
bouts of rabid
raptured action …
males of splendid
near-heroic
virility,
females of a
commensurate,
magnificent
fertility.

Ponder this shy
but quite able
go-get-'er, for
whom even sex
is not complex,
who meets and mates,
and keeps no count
but sees the flesh-
of-his-flesh both
diversify
and multiply;
who does not tire
for long, and with
the great outdoors
as his table
banquets on fresh
greens as he waits
for the desire
to mount to mount.

Consider this
suitor of sorts
who advocates
a direct style,
who's sharp on fun-
damentals and
in a twinkling,
his little heart
kicking, is hard
at it; who gets
and forgets while
composing no
explanations,
damnations, grand
pleadings or vows—
disengages
and instantly
begins to browse,
lifting to all
eyes his eyes (oh,
those lovable
black bunny eyes!)
innocent and
intelligent.

            The sun, having come
down hard all day, goes out softly from
our limbs tonight, the burn we'd otherwise
  be feeling tamed to a banked glow
by one of the white, magic lotions pulled
  from your big black sack of supplies.
           
            We're both up to the brim—
with rice, little shrimp, red snapper aswim
in a spiced lime-laced broth, greens in a mustard
  vinaigrette, black beans with cilantro
and chilis, pineapple wedges, papaya,
  coffee, some nutmeg-dusted custard.

            And my head's brimming too,
for as I'm drifting off, my back to you,
your breathing seems to flutter through a green
  undergrowth and I'm standing where
this morning we stood, dumbstruck to behold
  more flowers than either'd ever seen

            outside a garden: one
whole hillside under blossom, overrun
as by a river, golds, whites, pinks, reds, fluid
  and aflame!
                        (But now my sleep-tilted
task is to compute if blooms outnumber breaths,
or breaths blooms … And let's say you take

            eight breaths a minute, that's some sixty
minutes per flower and don't forget to carry the one but which
one is it?—and why at night do numbers clamor so, packed
  too tight too are they, no other room
to bloom, carry the one?—carry the sun under your skin,
  we do, and if you add a one to two, too?...)

            I arrive at my sum
down at the base of the slope, where I come
upon you, slyly deep in foliage,
  sheltering from the sun,
dipping hot red feet in a bouldered stream,
  three buttons of your blouse undone.

There are those great winds on a tear
Over the Great Plains,
Bending the grasses all the way
Down to the roots
And the grasses revealing
A gracefulness in the wind's fury
You would not otherwise
Have suspected there.

And there's the wind off the sea
Roiling the thin crowns of the great
Douglas firs on the cragged
Oregon coast, uprooting
Choruses of outraged cries,
As if the trees were unused
To bending, that can weather
Such storms for a century.

And—somewhere between those places,
Needing a break—we climb out stiff
From our endless drive to stand, dwindled,
On a ridge, holding hands,
In what are foothills only because
The neighboring mountains are
So much taller, and there are the breezes,
Contrarily pulled, awakening our faces.