The Purr
As you stand still in the hall thinking what
to do next and I approach you from behind,
I think behind must be best: your naked
rump scallopped beneath the plumb
line of your spine's furred tree. But
as I catch the concentration in the kind
angling of your head toward the cats and tread
catlike myself behind you, your scrotum
hung like an oriole's nest, I cut
beneath your outstretched arm and find
I'm hungry for your face instead,
hungry for our future. The mysterious thrum
that science can't yet explain awakes a hum
in me, the sound something numb come alive makes.
From
Cornucopia: New & Selected Poems,
(W.W. Norton and Company, 2002).