Leaning across a table/ travelling over water [the Hudson River].

I watch him chainsaw wood,
he watches me chop wood with an axe.

Wanting to held, but more than that:
to be contained. In the
generous, radiant warmth
of arms that exceed my own,
less flimsy
less fine. Solid.

I,
defiantly  containing myself
drip-dripping, in his direction,
words that mask the true intent,
(to have your arms around me).

But awareness descends
obstructing any possibility of the spontaneous
play of needs being voiced (unvoiced: known)
and met. [That was wordless
passed from me to you by osmosis,
it seems, and without desire’s flames
licking my spine.]

From experience I know,
that to receive is to take (with
some force): to obtain is to remove, and to
seize is to ruin.

He is kind. I know him;
and his hands – oblong, stained,
yet elegantly proportioned – nails cut short,
rather pale. Genuine. I
touch
them
with
mine.
And he doesn’t know
he is touching me.