Banked there, distended, it is some holy, half-risen bread or fruit or squash. A cache of insects leaks a balmy hum. The air is big with it, warm all over. Distant village lights engorge, handsome from our hill vantage off the back porch. In my mouth, the flesh gives.
Air slouches close, corpulent.
As tiger lilies with their long eyes watch, lids hulled, bean and sunflower stalks rise, full of the ground's wet effluence at high night. All around us shadows dilate and enter the lamp's flaccid half-light. Faithful, every quarter-hour, a ripely tinny church bell rolls over me, then slips into the hedge roots where it seems to lodge and swell. Helene is reading next to me. Emily is dancing a little in the kitchen.