Paris, 1970
Doisneau might have eyed and shot us
for how brazenly and rapaciously we kissed,
my red pumps akimbo on the cobbles,
you peeling off my silvery raincoat,
the poplars in the Bois de Boulogne
swaying, turning up silvered leaves.
We were as tender and ductile as fronds,
curled up in each other in pathos, in glory,
cooling down only deep in the night
when we wandered back to our hotel
to sleep entwined and inwardly-leaning
on that sour broken-springed mattress,
our room’s one window drawing dawn’s
lines and arcs––chimneys, rooftops, domes.
What did they think of us using together
the floor’s common bath––pipes knocking,
water swirling through the bidet––you
straddling it trying to wash your scrotum,
my belly muffling your laughter?
We could not have helped it, dissolving
back into kisses, into resurrections,
sprinting like fawn and satyr to our room,
wishing the disdainful doe-eyed desk clerk
gone, when, past noon, we’d stride out
again to gambol and ogle and gawk, eat
and drink, kiss and talk, our bodies opening
and flaunting themselves like two blooms
of hibiscus because we were in Paris, the city
set aside for creatures in our enlarged,
engorged condition––and time was ripe.