Middle Aged Lovers, II

You open to me

a little,

then grow afraid

and close again,

a small boy

fearing to be hurt,

a toe stubbed

in the dark,

a finger cut

on paper.



I think I am free

of fears,

enraptured, abandoned

to the call

of the Bacchae,

my own siren,

tied to my own

mast,

both Circe

and her swine.



But I too

am afraid:

I know where

life leads.



The impulse

to join,

to confess all,

is followed

by the impulse

to renounce,



and love--

imperishable love--

must die,

in order

to be reborn.



We come

to each other

tentatively,

veterans of other

wars,

divorce warrants

in our hands

which we would beat

into blossoms.



But blossoms

will not withstand

our beatings.



We come

to each other

with hope

in our hands--

the very thing

Pandora kept

in her casket

when all the ills

and woes of the world

escaped.