play the piano with your tongue hair

She in Bed and He in Morning

When she dozes off,
and he slips from the
bed to meet his friend
for pumpkin bread and coffee--

How wind seems rude as a faucet,
how all cotton sleeves drowse
away in flecks, dandelion clocks.

How strangers on bicycles
tuck or wag their miles of tongue
and shriek a bunch of oily hair.

How all tastes of burnt coconut.
How the drive melts water.

And when his friend waves and
laughs, it ricochets through his teeth
like a tennis ball in a museum
under night watch, every boing
the freeze tag of brutal light.

They gab for some odd hours.
Then he calls his kitchen phone
to see if she is up--to hope
that the call will not wake her.