For His Wife in Middle Age

And most of all, of course,
I see her walking through the house,
a glorious ruin, for who could walk
in times like these, the solemn stir
of Middle Age, both naked and alive
in each and all, her sainted pores?

The downy tuft of pubic hair
across her pubic bone, the pad pliant
beneath. The little frock of amber freckles on
the upper levels of her thighs.
And then she breaks my bones to sighs...
when last she lets me in!

I cannot kiss the breasts enough,
the aureoles of stone that browns
and hardens like a given fruit.
The dewy drops of spittle on her flesh
are like raindrops on apple skins.
What have I done to be anointed such?

The brittle, yielding, and perfumed
and silver tresses of her hair
fall down on me at first,
when finally she lets me in.
She pins my wrists and grins at me,
and grins to see my pelvis buck.

She’ll take my gifts only when I
most need to give them out.
And so she takes me in her clasp,
and guides that need inside the scented tomb
where life is forged in paradox. I skewer her.
She skewers me. And middle age in ecstasy.