A Marriage Book - James P. Lenfestey

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Swimming in the Sea of Time

      11  New New Mexico Woman

      12  You Know What I Know

      13  The Poet Visits His Son, a Concert Promoter, and Attends a Michael Franti Concert

      14  Dancing at Winter Solstice

      15  Wild Swans Near Gladstone

      16  Before the Grandchildren Arrive

      17  Watching Gus Draw

      18  End of Summer

      19  A Mirror in Rome

      20  Here Is My Promise to You, or Marco Polo Leaves the Kitchen for the Provinces

      21  When I Am Eighty

       EPILOGUE

        Wedding Poem

        Acknowledgments

       In the final analysis, poets and novelists will have more to say about love than psychologists, for they express the inexpressible, and describe individual persons and their love problems, with their individual solutions and failures, and this is true to life and to eros.

      John Sanford, The Invisible Partners

      WHO WOULD BELIEVE

      Even a good poet must be wary as a spider

      offering a book of love poems

      to the woman he married fifty years ago.

      If he exaggerates his love, she’ll know.

      If he denies it, she’ll devour him

      while remembering her old dead lovers.

      If he sands off the edge of his desire,

      what’s the point?

      And if his desire for her is undiminished,

      who would believe?

       PART ONE

       Lie Love Easy

      LIE LOVE EASY

      pores, pouring, pouring over

      lying under, lying, lie

      stroke soft furry truths

      in the lap

      pet soft purring truths

      in the lap

      take a long time

      jiggle hills easy

      love time

      gentle hills roll

      lick your fur

      lick your fur, cat

      make a breeze

      in the forest tangle

      kiss the slick

      leaves

      one and one

      become easy

      ease away

      the forest anger

      lie love

      please, no dread

      please, no leaving

      lie love easy

      AERIE AND HIGH

      I call to her from across

      the room,

      she hears hawks

      high over rolling hills

      we arc up, roll and join

      and roll away,

      high eyes glistening down

      I brush her once here,

      graze her once there,

      she feels wings

      I give her my licks of wing,

      sharp flicks of talon,

      my rough, cruel voice,

      my down

      we fall

      we fall

      we fall

      toward that river

      that soil

      that call

      Aerie and high

      aerie and deep

      we nest there

      we nest there

      and sleep.

      SHARED HEAT

      There is a certain hairy roughness

      to overcome, I understand,

      for me it is all easy,

      like biting into warm

      sour cream.

      To touch, then

      near sleep,

      to fold together

      like egg whites, like gears,

      then sleep without touching,

      sharing heat.

      Shared heat.

      Is this not the peace and comfort

      of the species?

      Why we gather under heavy

      robes in winter?

      Why we sew together

      such huge quilts?

      Roll apart, not touching

      in the night sleep.

      But never far,

      never too far,

      from the heat.

      WOODSMOKE AND PERFUME

      As a boy, there were

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