Uncollected Sonnet
My husband’s butt is nothing like Brad Pitt’s:
No harvest moons, yet with their gravity,
And craters like one finds in catchers’ mitts.
(Unlucky soul who scopes its cavity.)
Peaches yield to sweetness with each bite,
And yet I find no savor in those cheeks.
No fuzz to stroke, but stubble at fuzz-height,
Once black, now gray or white, morose antiques.
None long to hear it speak and yet it will,
When he’s asleep or thinks himself alone.
And no physician can concoct a pill
To still that noisome, off-key baritone.
Yet still I find my husband’s butt sublime,
Recalling our first meeting, in its prime.
The Floor Responds
I love the way you walk all over me,
And drive the rosin deep within my grain.
Your ribbons float behind you like a train
That mocks me and my plain geometry.
The audience applauds your symmetry.
They do not feel the blows that fall like rain,
Nor do they know how through me you attain
Your grands battements and petits batteries.
Because of you, I am much more than floor—
Mere planks of wood no longer, I’m a stage
Where you enact your passion and your rage
And then galumph backstage a crashing bore.
A curtain call and you and I are finished.
Outside the spotlight, we are both diminished.