i.
you are a fever
rough tongued and lapping
at the edge of my mind
all day your words insinuate themselves—
sliding between the crevices 
marking the too-often broken heart,
pushing into new seams 

stretching to hold me together,
insisting with every syllable their molten heat
bonding thought to feeling, 

promising an inflammation
of desire to come

ii.
you are a river
moving and rushing around the rocks of my defenses
bringing an aliveness in swirls and eddies
and calm pools of thought
where hope holds under the banks of lush surrender
and waits for the sweet hatches of your words
to feed the hunger that
grows and swells my spirit

iii.
you are the soft animal of my own lust
wherein a playful word lights a smile
and a laugh becomes a living thing
of wide-eyed wonder,
a wild being of nature, this thrill ... 

just now it's there on the path
running ahead of us
toward the adventure
of finding
and knowing
and mating