Some Evening Later

Who are these lovers, creeping back
from bushland to his parents' house?
They're hard to make out, like old movies,
but we know somehow what's happened there.
The bloodied scratches on the young man's
shoulders make him happy. In
the room where the girl's staying the night
she flings her clothes off, clutches him,
“Again! Let's do it again! Right here!”
her beautiful hurt body shuddering.
Is it lust or tears? But he cringes. Surely
his parents would hear them. And scuttles
away from her and sleeps alone.

“You were my wild girl I was timid with.
I couldn't hear you saying, ‘Don't have me as
your tumble in the scrub, but a woman
you love in your own home.”'
“Yes.
I could never speak that plainly, though.
I'd've jeered at that.”
Much older voices
in another house. Decades spent loving
other people. Now you sip coffee
on a kitchen stool. I rinse the dishes.
Upstairs my wife is sleeping and the wind
dies down, that hurls us through our lives.
And you visiting, beloved in my home.