Parked Car            

You straightened; your hands flew to your head
tidying your hair; you yawned and shivered;
and, Now I'll have a cigarette, you said.

I lighted up a pair
and by the infant light
I saw you still tidying your hair.

And so we breathed on fires not our own.
Breathed long and hard to stun the blood;
somehow to shock the lung, enflame the bone,
somehow to fetch the body out of stone.

(And as you drank for flame, pale yellow wings
held tremulous war with darkness for your face,
made fluttering reach for your collar's rumpled lace.)

Breath-parched, we tossed the stubs on the night's
   damp floor
and sat and sat and stared upon
the twin progeny our love could bring to pass:
two mites of fire smoking in the dew
two tiny sun-downs choking in the grass.

                       —Ernest Sandeen (1908-1997)