One Love Poem
Rilke is right and I’ll write
about simple things, though
first to mind is Love, and
there’s some debate
as to Love’s simpleness.
After some thought (years),
I decide it depends on
who you’re Loving, so
do you
see yourself better in his talk?
is his company serene stuffing,
enough that breathing
feels like productivity?
do you find his smell in swirls
of linen and hanging in the room suddenly,
like a note left on invisible
stationary, like an airborn
thought whisking you out
of stale solitary space
and gently alighting you
on the silver round dish strung up
at your end of the scale?
I don’t know where sex is
in this sweet talk of wholeness,
in this misty argument of two as one,
of companionship and complacency.
I see: teeth hitting, joints
discouraging, Love as a marathon,
then unbuttoning after Thanksgiving
dinner, and careless heavy lungfuls.
But if I’ve taken one thing from
doing nothing tandem, it’s that sex
is not as easy as hormones make
you think, while love is happy
to sit and simmer, and yield
every breath a more valuable
enterprise.
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