It has been a miserable day
driven by an intense heat
reinforced by high pressure--
even the swimming pool couldn't cool me down.
My mind longs for somewhere cool,
ambling along a driftwood strewn beach near La Push,
rambling through the Hoh Rainforest under a canopy of maple leaves,
lounging in an ice-filled tub on Kauai with my love on our honeymoon.

Is this feeling just the queasiness in my gut?
I guess I want to be anywhere a woman's reproductive rights
are sacred and men do not select who will decide what is legal.
I want to be where Merrick Garland is confirmed to the Supreme Court,
where politics does not obscure the fallout of rape and incest
and where human dignity does not disappear into the flawed visions
of dust devils rising along I-15 near the Nevada State Line,
somewhere far away from the fading mirage floating off 
into the ever-hazier smog pit called America.
                        

On Kauai on our honeymoon
Our best times 
We got soaked to the bones 
In sudden rainstorms,
slipped along trails,
Sat on the lanai with coffee and Hawaiian steak. 
Her Reeboks soaked in red clay,
We laughed into each other’s eyes
Our bodies danced through the night
Woke to sugar cane fields
Green vegetation rising up the Pali
Under a blue sky so intense a man
Could reach out and touch it
But never as passionate 
As the touch of my love
As she caressed my shoulder
Each night we curl together
All these years later
I feel the fire in her fingers 
As she traces Cupid's arrow 
Between my shoulder blades
And in the darkness I sense
Her eyes dancing through the light
Rejoicing.