Praise for a Long Marriage

The night is late, the moon in its waning phase like an old woman’s
trip on rickety bleachers at a grandson’s hockey game.
She catches herself before the full fall,
fools the executioner another day.

As night darkens, husband and wife lie beside one another. He devours
Anna Karenina for the umpteenth time, relishes the familiar
pleasure and how with each reading he is surprised
by something previously unnoticed.

She reads Women Who Run With The Wolves, collects the story bones
of wild women who refuse to be civilized into rigid roles.
He, nurtured by familiarity. She, excited
by adventure.

They joke that if they ever open a restaurant (they never will),
they would call it Comfort and Joy. He reaches his hand
across the king size mattress and hovers
over her cherished jewel.

Only he has witnessed this curly pelt transform from moonless black
to overcast grey. He lets his hand drop, barely touching
the sacred yoni. She continues to read or seems
to read while her body slightly trembles,

signaling him not to stop. They know the day will soon come when
their books will fall to the side, laid to rest like a new moon,
a new beginning invisible
to earthbound eyes.