leo
for Mom & Dad
It’s August, and your sign lounges
underneath the sun of summer,
lolls a lazy tongue, and rumbles
distant thunder in its throat. How
lovely that one month can bear as
at scratch of claw and tip of tail
your two holidays, between them
the long hot plain of plain hot days,
and while you sit beside a camp
fire seasoning the summer air
with ember memory, above,
in gaps between still leaves, pairs of
fireflies circle silently where
in half a year your sign will rise
and rampant bare its broad and star–
studded chest, gape its maw and roar.