For Jeff

I'm happy to be home in Germany again with my family. This poem is for Jeff:

SATURDAY AFTERNOON IN HEIDELBERG

Strolling the Hauptstrasse, baguettes
and brotchen in the basket, your hand
on my arm. The fine glinting
spokes of a bicycle passing, pebbles
sparking. We struck fire too, you and I,
through children, taxes, the cold frost
mornings in Oregon, cut emerald
lawns. Not an inferno—fire
trucks clustered, globe lights flashing—
but the warm center of a midnight
campfire, hands toasted over open
coals, the melted goo of a marshmallow
coating your scalded, pink tongue.