Late summer day dream

 I guess you came to me the way an acquired taste does, at first it didn’t take.
It didn’t settle or raise the stakes. Then I saw you, as if in portrait.
Suddenly, it all made sense and too much of it stayed.

Unconsciously, you ushered me toward you, good morning spilling from your lips.
I felt something strange in the encounter, gratitude.
But gratitude turned to long, distracting daydreams.

Blue skies of late summer carried you, walking the footpath,
bouncing, adjusting your hair.
That affection I found in watching you,
that same pang of hot despair.

A desire to find a kind of love few could ever teach,
where something unnamed becomes a tenderness we might reach.
A feeling that moves through me far too deeply.

That same late summer sun bronzes you as I hoped it would,
for that is how I need a woman to be,
majestic in the contrasts of her skin and mood.

Your likeness I have memorized, like an artist obsessed.
Your humor, I do not yet know.