Intimations

for Greg, on a business trip

Your words may arrive with the fat whine

of the semi's tires, the just perceptible

lilt where the road was washed in gutter trash

by the overflow of summer rain.

The birds are too hot to sing. The dogs

Grumble among themselves. Breathless,

Speechless, the afternoon hollows out

Space for your voice. I break the air waves

into identifiable syllables from the t.v.

and distant music. The kitchen radio

static whispers a plot for an intimate

rendezvous. I interpret those cryptic

articulations as your casual

turn of phase, the miraculous mishap

of hard palate and alveolar ridge,

your tongue and lips guilty of hit and run.