For My Husband

You sleep in the darkness,

you with the back I love

& the gift of sleeping

through my noisy nights of poetry.



I have taken other men into my thoughts

since I met you.

I have loved parts of them.

But only you sleep on through the darkness

like a mountain where my house is planted,

like a rock on which my temple stands,

like a great dictionary holding every word-

even some

I have never spoken.



You breathe.

The pages of your dreams are riffled

by the winds of my writing.

The pillow creases your cheek

as I cover pages.



Element in which I swim

or fly,

silent muse, backbone, companion-

it is unfashionable

to confess to marriage-

yet I feel no bondage

in this air we share.