After Love
Afterwards, the compromise.
Bodies resume their boundaries.
These legs, for instance, mine.
Your arms take you back in.
Spoons of our fingers, lips
admit their ownership.
The bedding yawns, a door
blows aimlessly ajar
and overhead, a plane
singsongs coming down.
Nothing is changed, except
there was a moment when
the wolf, the mongering wolf
who stands outside the self
lay lightly down, and slept.
–Maxine Kumin
Ever since returning home from India, I’ve been in a phase where words, particularly my own, feel frustratingly inadequate and unsatisfying. I just want to be silent, to let life pass through me with no parsing or analysis. So I am relying on poets and others to fill in for me for the time being.
In the meantime the non-languaged parts of my life are rich, rewarding and full. I am feeling very connected when I am in the studio and when I am in my body. So maybe my disconnect with fluent verbalizing isn’t such a bad thing.
I love this Kumin poem. Thank you Dave for sharing your leg, among other things.