Forms of Love

After Making Love

When I lie beside you after making love,
I can feel the snakes in you have gone to sleep,
I slide my hands down their long backs and hear them sigh,
I kiss their dreaming heads,
I nudge the tails, curved between your legs.
When I lie beside you after making love,
you lengthen yourself across the bed
and lean your back to me, you are as wet
and cool as a dolphin, and your breath,
deep and slow, is filled with the murmurs
of wolves returning home,
you lift your left hand and reaching
behind, you stroke my thigh
like five lizards licking the dew of communion.

When I lie beside you after making love,
and the clouds have opened and drenched
the bed, and the flowers on the nightstand
have exploded, dripping blossoms and wine
down the walls, and sheets and pillows
are clumped like debris in flooded creeks
and both of us lie shining like unearthed gold
at the foot of the avalanche,
I can still hear the echoes of a lion's call.
There is so much wild in you,
I want our bed to be the ark of our salvation,
I want to be the cave and plain and ocean
where the beasts in you are saved.

When I lie beside you after making love,
I listen to your hushed savannahs,
I do not know if its dusk or dawn,
Something is resting,
Something awakes.