A Summer of Scrumping

I have to be up there

I need to swim in the sky

it's not enough to be below,

to be beneath, in this glorious heat,

laugh with this golden afternoon and cry under these raspberry sunsets

it's not enough to smell the sky alone from down here

and be grateful just to have it -

I have to be up there,

peeling and knotting, churning and writhing, wheeling and rolling,

drifting in this ripest blue we're blessed with but three days a year

I have to be up there

and drown myself

where the wind's breath begins as a sigh,

like one drawn by the smallest kiss,

at the top of my neck, your teeth and lips,

I have to be up there

to bite and have the sun's juice dribble down my wrist

in the boundless, the truly empty shining boundlessness of it,

I have to be up there,

to breathe again

I have to be up there,

but offer me your hand once more my love

and I will plant roots so deep in this dark earth

they will think the world an apple

and I it's stem