At the Pond's Edge

I come to her the way I come

to a pond's edge in October dusk, so as

not to frighten the wood ducks,

my hands gentle, a drake drifting

across the pond's surface

or the slow caress of mist at dawn,

hanging now on, now above the still water.

Dusk or dawn, a man can be gentle,

may be always and always gentle,

and still be a man, her slow teaching

over long years, the classroom her body,

nearly a quarter of a century now,

and no longer the body's daily insistence,

the hard urgings that caused me once to

fear my own desire. We have slid

into middle age with a sweet understanding,

the pleasure of the long familiar,

a tenderness that still, no matter how gentle,

explodes into sudden wings on the water,

catching us both by surprise.