The Bite of Summer

Sunlight, lemon-juice sharp, orange-yellow,
beats down cricket-bat-whack to the
burn-hot denim of your oldest jeans.
Your spine-curve relaxes when the pins hammer in;
rattle-and-pop of a sunlight crochet.
An hour or two, and your skin will be
a cross-stitch of freckles, pocks and lines
in the sand-dunes of dead skin cells.
Why do we ask for the bubble-and-boil
of heat on the surface and the answering whistle
of blood in your train-tunnel veins?
Lie spread out on razor-blade grass,
feel the hammer-and-tongs striking down to the bones,
and call this a hazy time.