Lyme

Just days past solstice and the hours stretch
like strung wires across another sky rippled blue

her fever's been gone for days and still
it is your fear that snaps you from bed

each morning.  You run on wide dirt roads
because the snakes are out 

and you need to see

where your feet fall.  Just yesterday 
 you passed a small one, the diamonds
along its back just coming into focus.

You run farther and faster than you ever have-
antelopes freeze on hilltops and you
are the only moving thing for miles.

When she wakes you'll hold her and ask
all the same questions, how do you feel

how do you feel?  The olive tree blooms
and fills the air with thick honey, wet

black calves are licked clean by their mothers,
the river runs lower than it should.

It's June and unbelieveably lovely and
what you feel is the bright stone of fear

between your lungs.  This disease doesn't
exist where you live, each question turns back

on itself.  You watch her sleep away
the middle of each blue day, imagining
the fight happening in her small pale body.

You wait each hour out and try to trust
the medicine, trust her same freckled smile.

Her sister finds a swallow's nest, reads
paperbacks on the porch, dreams

of mountain lions walking
right up to the house.