IT’S ALL SEX

Sure thing,

I can feel the urge to mate...

it’s spring.

Can’t leave two cabbages

alone on the side-board for a moment.

And who needs to mix drinks.

They mix themselves.

You’re due to arrive any second

and you should hear

what the minutes and the hours

are doing.

As for the table cloth and the table,

the sofa and the throw rug...

inanimate objects,

the new love that dares not speak

its name.

Is that your car in the driveway now?

Or is it just air and asphalt rutting?

And is that your finger on the buzzer?

Or just the first finger, the first buzzer,

of many before we’re through?

RING RING

Wander the hallways if you will.

Be drawn by this creak of floorboard,

that faint light slipping out beneath the closed door.

Move for movement’s sake. Or go to a place

where someone could be there to greet you.

Your parents, Tom and Alva. Your children,

Michael and Annette. Be nudged by the

years lived. Or drawn by what still is left of them:

a photo here, a curtain there, a wall-paper,

a candle-holder that has long since seen a candle.

It’s your house. Just your presence is enough

to claim a bedroom for the first five years of marriage,

a bathroom for how pretty you looked staring in

the steaming mirror. And take the stairs as

flighty, as easy as you please. The kitchen

consecrates your recipes. The dining room

gathers everyone together, fills the empty chairs.

Down in the cellar, no one is hammering away

but you don’t need to know that. Spend

as long in the parlor as it takes an ancient log to bum,

a sofa pillow to snap back to attention

after everyone who ever sat on it is risen.

Someone’s ringing the front door bell.

Answer it when all else is exhausted.

DRIVING HOME ON A SNOWY NIGHT

Here they come,

like insects,

but this time

they’re snowflakes,

one after another

but before they get to five,

the windshield wipers swat them.

And everyone is different,

can you believe that,

but when it’s late at night,

on an icy road,

and I just want to be home,

then they may as well be clones.

They swarm out of the black,

they ride my head-lamps,

skid over my side mirrors

like Nordic skiers.

An invasion would just be like this I reckon.

They’d have no names.

They’d come in force.

If one fell, another would take its place.

And I’d probably be somewhere like this,

on my own, fighting back,

because I so want to be with you.

The windshield wipers never give up.

Would I?

© John Gray