The Poem on Your Lower Lip in Northern Indiana in March

Written by Cynthia Connell Davis

Your smile so broad with delight
as you come into my room --
you tear open the crack 
in your chapped lip.

Yesterday I kissed your lips
into my wetness persuading
you to stay 
and having to go, you burst
outside into whipping cold wind.

The chapping wind,
the salty taste of your blood,
sweet --
I think of white buckets
hanging on sugar maples
like pure vessels
the steady drip like a transfusion.
The syrup of you
lightly coagulated
into dark amber-red
The syrup of you
coagulates in my mouth

Outside
the cold water sluicing over boulders
lifting the aroma of the pine forest
between the maples
to our nostrils
the passion of wild nature
washes into us its rhapsody
twists us
together

the amber-red air like
the blood on your lower lip --
"Did someone hit you?"
"Yes, you."
I lick it, curl it back, 
warm it, inside me.