“Dune Forest Nocturne” by Hannah Faith Notess

Fireflies in the pines 

above the dark, soft folds 

above land rippled centuries 

after the glaciers receded 

like a sheet pulled back 

from a lover’s body. 

Long ago one New Year’s Eve 

I took off my green T-shirt 

for you in the guest bedroom 

to let your warm hands 

feel up my tits, my back, 

mine on the swell of your ass. 

I wasn’t an untrampled 

dunegrass hillside, no, 

I was the windswept 

dune shifting under you, 

uncovered like a shipwreck 

and you too became the sand 

layered under me, around me. 

As we eased into our skins, 

pleasure erased by wind 

like our sheets, stained and rumpled, 

washed then stained again. 

In time we bought new sheets, 

and with the years our bodies ebb 

and flow like the beach 

wider or narrower each year, 

their well-worn paths 

of pleasure traced and erased 

every time we arise. 

Come into the dark, babe; 

             past twilight these hills are dark enough

to ruin us, but soft enough to

stay.

Hannah Faith Notess is a poet and software product manager. Her first book of poems, The Multitude, won the Michael Waters Poetry Prize from Southern Indiana Review Press. She lives with her family in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where she co-runs a poetry reading series, Yellow Chair Poetry, in her house. Learn more about her work at hannahnotess.com.