Continental Breakfast Included

He read his smart book after supper
that told him how to engineer
a universe she never found
to have a rhyme for all its reason.
She dreamed of summer's setting sun
blood red, a scent of musk,
and purple veins of love at dusk.
He turned another page.

So did she so to speak,
when at last she spread her wings
but felt just incandescent heat
from the reading lamp she flicked
after half the crumpled sheets
turned cold again at midnight
until the morning when the earth
spun and tilted suddenly
and shook the hand that spilled the cream
she tried to pour in lukewarm coffee.