Elderly Sex
Life’s buried treasure’s buried deeper still:
a cough, a draft, a wrinkle in the bed
distract the search, as precarious
as a safecracker’s trembling touch on the dial.
We are walking a slack tightwire, we
are engaged in unlikely acrobatics,
we are less frightened of the tiger than
of the possibility the cage is empty.
Nature used to do more—paroxysms
of blood and muscle, the momentous machine
set instantly in place, the dark aswim
and lubrication’s thousand jewels poured forth
by lapfuls where, with dry precision, now
attentive irritation yields one pearl.
