Excerpt from a Love Story

In sleep, I live a never-was. You hit the ground laughing and at first I am hands on hips, pouting lips, then I fall onto you, nuzzling hands nuzzling hands. And the carpet deepens green, grows leafy and I roll you onto soft needles and you roll me out of them--a battle of wills, yes, but not scarifying. And we rise smelling like a cat's coat and we are this musk and I pick thistle from your sweater, you straw weed from mine, and we turn for home, where we are: home, soaking lentils for soup, rounding up dogs from an evening walk, table cotton spread with stoneware and silver and the napkins too, smooth, the gauze curtains blowing into us. It's your same teeth in your mouth but not: they're brighter somehow. "Lucky to have a moon," you say--like snow over our fields of corn and beans and butternut. I'm making tomorrow's lists and there is no blood, just the background drumbeat of a pulse which is our knowing, the back roads, to avoid traffic, to make time...