BODY HEAT

Warm days,

cool nights

and the sap

runs.  Below the earth,

deep in burrows, soft-furred

creatures stir.





Hope or imagination

the motion she glimpsed that day?

There by the roadside, just a blur

on the periphery.  An image so brief

it had to be unreal.





Heading for the car that evening

her breath clouds the air, proof

of the cold's return.  And then,

on the road, the season's first

kill.  Seconds dead, wound still gushing

from a car's impact, steam-like wisps

rising from the gash, merging

into dusk's invisibility.

Body heat, she asks herself,

or did she see the creature

spirit ascending?

© Ronnie R. Brown