Simplicity’s the key: incidental, apple-sweet.
After an afternoon’s ecstatic exertions,
the shift and roll and hoist and slide
from one bottom-slapping position
to the nape-cupping next,
how best to allow dissolving memory
some hope of permanence?
By play-acting an abridgment of Longus,
or Tintoretto al fresco,
mouth kissing mouth and no more,
fingers entwined, tendering past bite-
marks and bruises, nakedness restored
to chaste pastoral by the
exquisite, vigorous exhaustion of lust.
Through nostrils and eyes and ears
love steals back in, and murmuring touch
is eloquent in wet hair,
on sweat-slippery skin, an eyelash
or fingernail for fluent catalyst,
describing without words what flesh
has shared with flesh, gathering
the brood of promises within the heat
of two bodies barely unfastened,
laying forth a plan for future pilgrimage
with each sigh and bright-sheared tremble,
each strategic placement of silk scarf or candle flame
to enhance or delay, inspire or prolong
the doling out in waves or spray or stillness,
the fine fat elements of incremental pleasure.