[aside.]

Whenever these brown gazes make contact,
they wrestle nervously, clasp and release
and clasp again, jostling for leverage,
pushing and pulling, intent and afraid.

No hint of this betrayed by face or hand—
no words leap from lips or echo in cold,
dark, lonesome valleys of mind or body.
Yet shameful wordless weakness haunts the joints, aches

along muscles that must needs clinch or snap.
Jesus!—we have wives and kids and beliefs
and desires neither welcomed nor understood,
ratcheting this tension up and up until

our only relief is beating retreat
to houses and lives and preoccupations
that keep souls and flesh safe from what we would do
without them—What would we do without them?