push its near end with his slipper almost

gently, to encourage it toward

the heat which before we went to our sleeps

was incandescent,

rose orange, flower and food

of heat. And when the sensor would flick on,

I’d watch the lumen upright crack

between the door and its frame, to see

his bulk, now large and slow, pass,

like watching a spirit. Then I pulled

the down cover

up over

my chin, and a part at the top rose,

and unfolded over my face, like a curl of

dirt taking me into the ground.

Then I came to the window and sat, under the

eave where the barred owl would cry out

in sovereign peace or in longing, and now

I sit where I used to sit—as if

alone in the world, which I am not, and look

out at the land of which he is the

guardian, in perpetuity,

and watch as first

light comes

slow, the milky surface, where we

saw, in the cold, two coyotes cavort,

screaming—half tail, half dog, like us,

and, in the heat wave, where we’d sunk below

the surface of Wild Goose, we’d look at

each other’s bodies, golden with silt,

not as if external, and not

as if, but in true, difficult love.

His Birthday

When I’m in New York and he’s in New Hampshire, and I’m

starting to make love to myself,

on his birthday, I look around for something

silky, as I’d rubbed the satin binding of my

childhood blanket when I’d sucked my thumb

to sleep, until I was 13 and had

buck teeth. On his 75th,

I wanted to caress myself

through something which had a glimmery feeling.

And when I came, the first time,

it almost picked me up and threw me

off the bed. Resting, I panted,

like the pleasure-wounded. And the second time,

the blunt force of it was so

deep it made me think of the crump

of fireworks, the full chrysanthemum

in each chamber of the sex’s heart.

After the third time, my hand hung

down off the side of the mattress as if by a

thread, like a spider dropping down

to affix a hypotenuse for a web,

and after the fourth, for a while I could not

open my left eye, sun

green around the rim like a pond

at noon. He is alive! He is 75!

I lie in liminal dishevel, the sweet

remains of a birthday party, spiral

honeybee candles, with black wicks—

the taffeta ribbons, the many happy returns.

His Voice, a Week Before His Spirit Follows His Voice Out

When it’s been a few days since I have

heard his voice, when I call him I start

laughing with happiness, to hear

the known, low, male burr—not

monotone, but melody,

resonance—and the more exhausted

he is, the more fur sound,

the rough mammal with a coat both rough

and smooth, curly, wavy, hoarse,

talking to me! With his tremor, he can’t

type, and now he can’t really