Sunday bunch on the patio, GRAM

(a poem on the occasion of Lisa's 31st birthday)

thin slices of pineapple and melon
taste for ten
beneath walls of glass and concrete
smooth gray squares, 30 feet or higher,
in which our groups' two architects are well-pleased.

see and be seen
by cloud and sky
through rectangle roof cut --
we are out-of-doors but still inside something
that feels to me
like a temple to a cool and quiet god.

nearly bite-sized blueberry muffins,
fruit of the vine and the work of human hands,
cheese and eggs and a glass of water --
we drink it and we thirst again.
and someone takes a picture of embarrassed green eyes smiling,
and someone lightly lays her little finger on the edge
of her husband's hand,
and if I lean back one inch more i will fall over
in this chair,
but it's fun to press your luck and to feel yourself
on the edge of a thing: sometimes temptation for temptation's sake
is the hardest to resist.

two gray-haired women eat at a table ten-yards away
and a half-mile from us a turtle warms on a rock
in the middle of the most modest Grand river.

the things we say are those it occurs to us to say,
the questions we ask are the ones that come to mind,
while your hair curls leisurely at your ears,
blonded by the summer sun
and falls carefree around your shoulders
and down your back.

-M. Lott

(For those who made this weekend so lovely--you know who you are--much love and gratitude.)