When things get hot and heavy this weekend or one August
twenty years from now and I start tapping hexameters
up and down the shoulder-blades of my beloved (insert
auspicious, trustworthy-sounding, stolid but fun name here
for I can conjure none), I hope I do it right,
never losing sight of the skin whose golden toughness
allows the counting, never moving my fingers so briskly
that I can’t hear his breathing, and never forgetting, even
in the lonely heights of sublimest inspiration—
What is your substance?… O rose … and grey and full of sleep —
to flip the warm flesh over and whisper, It had to be you.
from Silver RosesFind it in the library
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