Jack Scott writes

Part III

What happened next -
was unprecedented
in this generation:
we made love.
On bed of daylilies,
nested in the ferny matrix,
with Pretty Boy’s Baby
very much in sight,
we paid silent homage
to that for which
we had no words.

Our bodies,
repairing lovelessness
in the rushes,
now struggled
with resurrection
of remembered love itself.
In hindsight,
in this elevated moment
of remembrance
of all the varied places
where we’d blended bodies
with hope freshly before us,
oh, so confident we were
that what we had, we’d have,
the letting go of it:
impossibility.

Making spoons is metaphor
for love’s naive endurance
when two are young enough
to believe that they are one.
Sleeping with each other naturally,
once first spell is broken,
takes trial and error practice.
Each swears that he or she
can hold hands forever,
or sleep with other cradled on one arm.
Cramps creep crablike into bed
biting fingers, numbing arms,
(what is the word for when
bodypart falls asleep a‘tingling?).
So, overnights, their union
is pried asunder, separated,
uncoupled from eternal vow,
and their days as well
tend to tug at seams.
Happens to everyone
on a long and sliding scale.
“No!” we’d sworn, “not us”,
but then we went and did it.

We broke daylilies in our sweaty haste
(They only last a day.)
while Pretty Boy’s Baby doll
remained unclaimed
by the flow of water.
She wasn’t where she’d be forever,
that we knew, and also
that we were drawn
to be involved
in what her fate might be.

See what I’m doing here?
She is in it,
how could she be other?
How could it be other?

The flowers we had lain upon
we gathered as bouquet,
atonement against wasting them.
We picked Vinca minor also,
to transplant into our garden,
touched mushrooms with our fingers,
squished mud between our toes,
watched spermy little tadpoles
in a mud pond on the island.
A lone dragonfly fooled me.
I’d thought there were two, mating;
there was only one.