Orlando
Orlando
Hide the children. Cover the tomato plants. Here is what I’ve been thinking about since Orlando.
ALFALFA SURFER
there is nothing
like
the scent of a man after a day in the hayfield
sweet corn
and
freshly cut grass
a teenage man
who doesn’t own a shirt
at his peak
muscles moving in places
he doesn’t know he has
tanned arms pitching bales of hay
onto the flatbed truck.
I am 13
learning to drive
the flatbed truck in my grandfather’s hayfields.
I bury my face
into Alfalfa Surfer’s armpit
when we get back in the
the flatbed truck.
The scent of a man
the underside of a man -
I rub my face against
his chest
my nose
across his forearms
he doesn’t stop me
from getting aroused by his body
he doesn’t take advantage of me
Alfalfa Surfer.
I’m where I want to be
between a man’s arms
my ear against his chest
listening
to the sound of his heartbeat.
Close to the barn
Alfalfa Surfer
places my hands on the
steering wheel and lets me
back up
the flatbed truck
to the base of the
hay elevator
my grandfather
standing
in the barn loft
yelling orders.
“I hate him,”
I say.
“He’s your granddaddy, buddy,”
Alfalfa Surfer says.
He opens the door and lifts me out.
“I swear,”
he yells up to my grandfather,
“this boy’s grown an inch this month.”
I
land on the ground
with a boner
not a “boy” boner either
and
I don’t bother to hide it
I am proud
to be a man
well maybe on the cusp
with a boner
for another man
in 1968.
+=+
for my husband
Luke,
my very own Alfalfa Surfer
33 years together
loving
living
laughing.
We are lucky boyz.