February 2nd: It Happens This Way Sometimes It's Not Supposed to Happen This Way It's Supposed to Happen This Way

It Happens This Way Sometimes It’s Not Supposed to Happen This Way It’s Supposed to Happen This Way

My darling, the wind falls in like stones

from the white hearted water and when we touch

we enter touch entirely.  No one’s alone.

Men kill for this, or for as much.

                                                                The Truth the Dead Know

                                                                Anne Sexton

Death’s not erotic, or it’s not supposed to be,

shaped in a morality unpliable, unreliable

as a corpse in a box.  It’s not supposed to make

a body want to come near the heat of another

body, to seek sweet cleavage mingled with oil

perfume, how the sweat rises with the living

rising after paying their debt respects of hanging

their head they’re just not thinking about

taking you to bed, not thoughts but I bet the body

the living still alive body is electric so electric

with the need of their naked grief it’s on their

cheek and the gleam of their chin, it’s a thin

trail going down their neck where every mourner

can smell it can read it in the air but spend

their time unreading it in respect of the bride

who holds her hand over the pew back who opens

her mouth to the host who tucks her son’s shirt

in before they leave into winter--no--we’re not

animals.  We’re not like lions who drive their mates

into heat just to mate and mate again while her dead

young ones blend in with the savannah grass

and shadows pass over them from time to time

and the clouds pull apart and then darken

and she’s split into two reconciles: her dead

sons and her scattered eggs she’s just now one

by one collecting after their scatter on the kill

floor.  She’s nesting and closing her eyes while

she waits for the lion to have his way.  It’s a different

kind of pleasure, more a need like we’ll never need

in any other way than desire--how a woman, walking

away from her father’s fresh grave, the way she’d done

three months before with her mother, aches

for some thing to caulk the crack that’s gone from

the small of her back up to her clavicle,

and then around and deep in her breastbone

and begins to settle like a chill no lit coal could

thaw only touch only a hand under her blouse

nipple between his fore and middle finger

rising, coming alive.