bill's private quarrel
Dale Cottingham
i lie in bed alone
electric in my skin
my naked flank exposed
by the opened sheet
i make myself enticing
facing her empty side
all you need do
is reach your hand to me
thrumming in this dim lamp light
it will not be like last time
when i touched your bare legs
and you stiffened
like a rusted gate
treating me like some stranger
you who promised long ago
to share yourself with me
i did not force it
turned on my side away
now i play this silly game
to coax what love you have for me
i hear entering feet on floor
see you through my barely opened eye
hear rustling of clothes
feel the bed dimpling
then nothing
no playful words
no whispering
you lay flat as the dead
how could you fail to take the bait
unseeing wife dear as breath to me
who sees my being as absence
i am cursed all my starts and mis-starts
my words and sighs
earn me nothing
the sheets between us are fallow fields
inches i have no way of traveling
so i open my eyes to the darkness
which makes no judgments
gives no restrictions
would you notice if i spent
the night on the couch
or drove down the road
to the bewitchment of another’s arms
but would the pleasure be worth it
or just give you a further wedge
to drive between us
dear wife who may be sleeping i will stay
but do not hold me in your prayers
or hope for me as you once did
keep to your rut
and i’ll laugh when i can
bearing your brand like an old bull
put out to pasture alone
where silence will be my only confidant
which i think is what the preacher means
when he says we are lost
surrounded by a troubled silence
more lonely than being alone
Dale Cottingham
i lie in bed alone
electric in my skin
my naked flank exposed
by the opened sheet
i make myself enticing
facing her empty side
all you need do
is reach your hand to me
thrumming in this dim lamp light
it will not be like last time
when i touched your bare legs
and you stiffened
like a rusted gate
treating me like some stranger
you who promised long ago
to share yourself with me
i did not force it
turned on my side away
now i play this silly game
to coax what love you have for me
i hear entering feet on floor
see you through my barely opened eye
hear rustling of clothes
feel the bed dimpling
then nothing
no playful words
no whispering
you lay flat as the dead
how could you fail to take the bait
unseeing wife dear as breath to me
who sees my being as absence
i am cursed all my starts and mis-starts
my words and sighs
earn me nothing
the sheets between us are fallow fields
inches i have no way of traveling
so i open my eyes to the darkness
which makes no judgments
gives no restrictions
would you notice if i spent
the night on the couch
or drove down the road
to the bewitchment of another’s arms
but would the pleasure be worth it
or just give you a further wedge
to drive between us
dear wife who may be sleeping i will stay
but do not hold me in your prayers
or hope for me as you once did
keep to your rut
and i’ll laugh when i can
bearing your brand like an old bull
put out to pasture alone
where silence will be my only confidant
which i think is what the preacher means
when he says we are lost
surrounded by a troubled silence
more lonely than being alone