The weight of dusk falls heavily
Causing the cottonwoods to sigh and drop fuzz to grass.
It can’t help it, caught in the last exhalations of day,
It simply does and lets others ask why.

The blanket, old green wool,
Spread under the July stars at the center of Greenhorn Park,
Feels her warm skin with nervous fumbling fingers, eager, pensive.
Love, the scent of the grass cut in the morning, still lingers under the blanket.
Eyes close and pressure.

He feels himself pulled into the current, willingly following words,
Actions,
Willingly, half-consciously, following an unannounced promise.

Eyes open to warm skin and pressure.
Love, the scent of grass.
July stars, danger of bats.
Nervous hands move across warm and cold skin,
The double click of dragonflies in flight,
One atop the other, one end bent impossibly downward and
Split away,
He is left to chase her,
To follow, to find.

Marc Janssen lives in a house with a wife who likes him and a cat who loathes him. Regardless of that turmoil, his poetry can be found scattered around the world in places like Penumbra, Slant, Cirque Journal, Off the Coast and Poetry Salzburg. Janssen also coordinates the Salem Poetry Project, a weekly reading, the annual Salem Poetry Festival, and was a 2020 nominee for Oregon Poet Laureate.