Love’s Prospects

Yours is the prospector’s love.
I am sluiced and raced and winnowed.
You gold-rush through my gangue.

The home-coming of the surveyor:
to rest on the cadastral map
where his metes-and-bounds are tangible.

Furlongs of dross and lode,
the prospects of your love.

From Cry Wolf

Ship-share

The way I was I could not share a bed or a ship.
I would not share a room. There was a curfew
and all the world was banned. This war went on.

Then you know what happened. You know,
how the invisible deals with the visible, how God
made peace and made woman, and she woke and sang.

The newly turned she. The extravagant love,
the quilt thrown back. The bed like a lifeboat
lolling with loads. Love nudging with its wedding hymns.

And us, free from wealth and caste, night in,
night out, dining on quince with a runcible spoon.