the Smell of Morning

You remember the time…

We walked through the desert

As we bounded through the sand

You, looking delicious, with your flawless

eyes locked on me

as we talked of training horses

and obsession of one another

The rising sun a fluorescent hallucination

On that freezing morning

We kissed for the first time in the New Year

Under that magnificent magenta sky—

Where the carnage of our lives melts away

To the experience we are supposed to have—

In the smell of morning

Something I have never sensed—

Before you.