It’s true, the weather is beautiful, cool enough
for a sleeve, and almost cloudless,
the wind rocking the warm planks
of the dock where I play backgammon
with my host and eat sandwiches
in crustless triangles. After lunch I read
on the porch, an afghan smoothed
over my knees and a highball perched
on a stack of Harlequins beside the loveseat.
The days pass easily, as you said they would.
But if you were here, my dearest, my most
comfortable of loves, I could belch, scratch my armpits,
and sit with my legs splayed.
I could nap in ripped underwear, drool on the arm
of the couch. And when I grew bored, I would bat
the newspaper from your hands and tease,
The Spanish moss in the oaks looks like pubic hair.
We’d shower together in water pumped
from the river, stand drying before a box fan,
then lie down smelling like coins, counting
our wealth, lie damp with the sheen
of the river at midday gleaming
on my breasts, your thighs, our laced arms
beneath the pleated rice-paper curtains
held up with clothespins, the window open
to the banks, to their cordgrass and mussels
and the steady current that pulses between them.