In the Midnight Hour

Pamela Miller

It's that gluey, torpid hour of the night
when garbage trucks sleep in the town's pants pocket
and even the cats in heat have cooled down,
dozing like spiky dust bunnies
beneath a porch of sludgy sky.
But here in this vast blue bed, heroic
as "The Bridge on the River Kwai,"
my lips are a movie on the screen of your hair,
they are crazed sailors swarming down
the gangway of your chest,
they're Pernilla "Bowlegs" Bjornssen,
the champeen bronco rider,
just off the boat from Goteborg
but heading for Dodge City fast.
And who are you, sir,
storming my ramparts
with your roller coaster hands and your kamikaze hips
and your moans like chocolate syrup?
Hit me right smack between love's eyes
like a baseball slammed through Heaven's picture window,
like the flamethrower voice of Wilson Pickett,
its coruscating whomp and whammy
making midnight last for centuries
as we thunder up the stairs of our desire
and the whole damn Milky Way comes twinkling down to meet us,
unspooling before us its endless esplanade
of wildly applauding stars.