The Inner-Child of Being in Heat

All the jiggly women are hanging inside,
behind their window-panes. They’re draping
themselves in sensual overtones,
slipping out of shades,
resting themselves on cool earthy flagstones.

themselves steamy greenhouses
the scent of earth and musk,
coiled curls, soft-gentle pearl white skin, the icy-
drenched and see-through ladies saunter through their homes
looking for towels unsuccessfully
unmindful of the curtains, the shades, the blinds unwound
and the neighbors with their clippers edging closer,
closer to the restless cills.

there are figurative orange slices and mangoes,
watermelon and cantaloupes cubed and dripping
sweetly ripe for fingers
and literal mouths, wet tongues
delightfully joyeous slurping supple juices
and sticky dampness washing across cheeks

and chins in love, with smiles, as tender as the sound of inner-children
screaming through the cold sprinkler: moms' cutoff
shorts ringing with the slap of sprinkler rush
and the shirts wettening
denim crotches lined with sprinkler spray; a stray water balloon

catching the mailman’s shoes
yet nothing every now-grown mom can say but
sorry, and laugh, and yell to cool it right now!

And the mowers and the hedge clippers and the indigo butterfly,
yellow-black bee, crimson-tipped cardinal on the branch above
the yard saintly and looking down unjudging like
Jesus and the earthworms getting a soak and mud on
the shoes, the seat of the cut offs and the scrape on the knee

and the tears until the bandaid,
and the kiss--