He asks to make love, and because he asks, I do,
though my aging desire has turned instead to
the bedside table, to the London Review
of Books, to the now sexier pursuit
of end rhymes and long walks through
leaf-blaze. I’d never thought it true
that the fathomless lust of thirty-two
could silt and still. Now, I must brew
it up if I want it. It’s not you,
I hasten to tell him, unclewing
his anxiety and letting the breeze undo
it. How much earnest whispering this room
has witnessed—plans to make new
life, plans to help failing parents move
to their last dependency, rue
at lost chances, the shy wooing
of new ones—this, too,
what lovers do between the sheets. The view
from the window doesn’t get old, the moon,
and morning peeking in, the bed imbued
with both solemnity and mirth, the glue
that binds us, like two ancient, tangled yews.