AFTER LOVE
Afterwards, 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
lay lightly down, and slept.
— Maxine Kumin
from Selected Poems 1960-1990.
© WW Norton & Company
It is the true season of Love
when we know that
we alone can love;
that no one could ever
have loved before us
and that no one will ever
Love in the same way
after us.
~ Goethe
Love/Life Poems
