i love you ginger bread mama

ginger bread mama

all sweet and brown

love you

more than tired boys

love collard greens and candied yams

more than new watermelons

do the sun.

before you,

i was older

and owned a sky of sleep

and not even cowboy dreams

were poets enough to wish me you.

now in brownness warm

everything is everything and

our forms move in soft affirmations.

trying not to wake up the sun.

–Doughtry Long