Improv 1, Week 5

“Meditation at Lagunitas” –Robert Hass

There was a woman
I made love to and I remembered how, holding
her small shoulders in my hands sometimes,
I felt a violent wonder at her presence

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When I make love, I feel the bones
beneath or above, pressing my inner
thighs like an airplane landing on
Eisenhower’s strip, every fifth mile the
alarm as pungent as sweat. How violent
this convulsion, this ramming and
ramification. The ease of holding shoulders,
hips, and wrists between cupped palms
waiting for that skin-breaking bite
and squeezing just a bit too hard. How
small this feeling of wonder, how small
the memory of fingers and floodlights, of
families crying for comforts.