Both silver-haired, we lie on the grass
in the sun, soaking autumn
up into our bones. Who cares if we kiss?
if you rest your hand on me there?
if I slide my hand inside your shirt?
There are baby ducks and the dams are full.

Sometimes, my breasts feel full
to bursting, and even sprawling on the grass,
intoxicated by the pulsing of pumpkin-fleshed autumn,
I want to feed you on the nipple that you kiss,
and I would, if I believed there was any blue milk in there,
where your fingertips toggle, underneath my shirt.

The sky over the dam is the innocent blue of a cotton shirt,
the dam, itself, obese and full-
swollen, like the bellies of dumb sheep guzzling grass;
the day fragrant, like the applewood stink of autumn.
Sometimes, you are too big and empty, the way you kiss;
I meet your lips, but there is a panicky hollow in there...

...your engulfing, muscular mouth tries to suck me right in there,
and my own mouth so wet, so recoiling, I wipe it on your shirt.
Feeling your circling, tender touch, my afternoon with you is full,
while we seem slow as grass...
slow as the bird-gathering twilights of autumn,
slow as the moment that once stilled us in a suspended kiss.

If only we had realized, when it was our last kiss-
"if only!" What more useless words are there?
If only I had stayed a second longer, lingering inside your shirt;
if only I had not looked down on your eyes so blue and fear-full;
if only we had stayed under the peppermint gum, in the grass,
amongst the sticks and clinging bits of autumn.

Soon, the snow will burn the leaves of autumn;
lips, once soft and warm, will suffer winter's roughened kiss;
once again, loneliness will be the only bedfellow for me there,
and some days, on the streets, I might see your shirt
or your rocking walk, in some place that's full
of seagulls... (remember how you straddled me on the grass?)

In autumn, the trees are tired; their spent colours sadly confetti the grass;
there is a bittersweet smokiness lingering in my night-shirt.
And the thought of winter is full of the cavernous longing in your kiss.