(Your body weakening, I change the bed around you.)
The largeness of it
stayed me. I had forgotten
how the rise and slope is not
nothing, how we have shape,
an oval that is real, and real,
undying, headlong moss.
I looked away when you did.
The mound rose and fell
and did not think of blushing.
In your steady, anti-septic
panic, you could not have been
more naked, more at mercy –
you, with the windswept face,
the shameless biceps!
So I switched the red
cotton sheets for the new beige
silk feast; I tucked away
your silvering curve.
Those last weeks,
you did not speak of your god
who spoke only of summer.
His was a hugeness turned
anatomical. Spent and wordless,
you refused to humor him.
I fell to smoothing over you
the threads’ dry shelter.
We kept our own company.
