Poem of the Week

Come, my body, leap up, while you still can,

onto my knees, into my lap. Come let me pet you,

comfort you and take comfort while there's time,

while you last. How calm you are: content, it seems,

with your infirmity, your age, in the almost changeless

youth of your soft hide, your pelt and shy quiet,

expressionless as you huddle and crouch for this leap

you can still make, though it's grown great, this petty

piece of your young and many springs.

Why did I never, body, cherish you enough?

Although I thought I was spending all my minted hours

on you, till I'd cry at the long waste of time, chained

by eyes and tongue, the ends of every extremity,

to your pleasure. Now I can't recall ever once

kissing you, lying locked in you, deep as I want.

You'll die, it won't be long, body, swiftly

in animal nobility - how you wear your decline unnoticing,

the way a poor man walks in his only shirt to work -

and then, without you, in what mud of my own

making will I linger, falling apart? Purr now

and fuse your old pleasure into crotch of my torso,

palm of my hand, vision of eyes and sag of diaphragm

inseparably; they're yours. Give me your indifference

that a once forest-wide range comes down

to couch and counter now, and this lap. Give me

your unrepentant having-known

a more-than-ant's-intimacy with the grass,

a more-than-god's-innocence in the hunt,

a greater-than-winged-agility in branches

and light. Leap up, body, while you still can,

let me finally hold you, feel you, close enough.