MARGARET GIBSON

Bed

::
“Well, we’re not sixteen anymore,” I say softly.

::
“Funny you should say that . . .  ”
and you begin
talking memory, as if we were
in fact sixteen,
mistaking me for some distant
virginal mist
rising off female skin
like fog off a lake.

“I didn’t know you then,”
I reply. “I’m your wife
now—remember? 
Happy also to be
your mistress, if you’d like.”

We’re laughing now,
under the covers,
his face near
my thighs. He comes up
for air, he’s a conspirator:

“Margaret likes that, too.”

::
Making love takes longer.
We make reservations
as if for dinner out.
Afternoons for delight,
bed? or sofa?
Well, isn’t the body
a space-time event?
Isn’t it a river,
or the color of the ridge
seen through winter woods
at four, when sun
spills gold on it, then
russet and purple,
dun and dusk?

::

“Your skin,” you murmur,
“soft—here, feel . . . 
so beautiful.  It’s so beautiful. 
Here and now, snow
falling outside, and we’re
warm, inside each other. . . . 
                                               Have we ever done this before?”