Afterward, the compromise. Bodies resume their boundaries.

These legs, for instance, mine. Your arms take you back in.

Spoons of our fingers, lips admit their ownership.

The bedding yawns, a door blows aimlessly ajar

and overhead, a plane singsongs coming down.

Nothing is changed, except there was a moment when

the wolf, the mongering wolf who stands outside the self

Appetite

I eat these wild red raspberries still warm from the sun and smelling faintly of jewelweed in memory of my father

tucking the napkin under his chin and bending over an ironstone bowl of the bright drupelets awash in cream

my father with the sigh of a man who has seen all and been redeemed said time after time as he lifted his spoon

men kill for this.

Maxine Kumin (1925-2014)

Everett down the hill's

52 and trim. No beer gut.

Raises beef, corn, hay, cuts

cordwood between harvests.

Goes to bed at 8 and falls

into sleep like a parachutist.

He's never been to a ballgame.

He's never been to Boston though

he went over to Portland Maine

one time ten, fifteen years ago.

In Sullivan Square, they

luck out, find a space

for John's car, take

the T to Fenway Park.

The famous T!

A kind of underground trolley.

Runs in the dark.

No motorman that Ev can see.

Jammed with other sports fans.

John has to show him

how to put the token in.

How to press with his hips

to go through the turnstile.

How to stand back while

the doors whoosh shut.

How to grab a strap

as the car pitches forward.

How to push out

with the surging crowd.

Afterward Ev says the game's

a whole lot better on tv.

Too many fans.

Too many other folks for him.

by Maxine Kumin

I eat these wild red raspberries still warm from the sun and smelling faintly of jewelweed in memory of my father

tucking the napkin under his chin and bending over an ironstone bowl of the bright drupelets awash in cream

my father with the sigh of a man who has seen all and been redeemed said time after time as he lifted his spoon

THE FURTIVE VISIT

We opened the foxed pages of our hearts back, further back, and let them stand, climbed through mild rain to the nippled pond, clung in a wet embrace, then drew apart.

I watched the taillights judder as you took the downhill elbows of the mudslicked lane minutes shy of midnight. Not again, I thought, whistling the dogs back in,

the rain now picking up its steady redirect.