Making Love

How is it possible
that we have never done this thing
before tonight.

How in all these years
of autumn pressing leaves
to swirl in gutters,

flapping orange,
curling dry and blowing high
how only now that we have

come to carry bags,
made from lists
of gathered words.

We always said we’d buy the book.
And then we did.
And now we’re here.

And my kitchen is hanging
like a hot star,
and you are reading:

simmer slowly for 5 minutes
and we are learning
the ways for making stock.

I am feeling
a fluttering
of the solar plexus.

With no one touching-
I am feeling
the small narrowing of lower back

hands brushing, hairs lifting,
a hand around my heart.
And our kitchen

has super nova-ed in the darkness.
Our clean cups, our hot water,
my body feeling like it’s made of fire-

and this thing
is something that I don’t know how
we’ve come to learn the art of making.

This thing,
that in the end has happened quickly –
I don’t know how it’s caught my breath,

I don’t know how it’s made me gasp.
It’s pinned itself against our shoulders.
It’s in the steam, it’s on the window.

It’s lifted up the sky.