What in god’s name are they doing anyway!

See how she moves against the crab-apple bark

worn smooth now from so many years of this…

She rocks, waiting, and waiting until he sees her.

They see all of this.

But what can be done...

Nannies, nurses, parents have tried, uncles and aunts,

all tired and worn from so many nights

of wondering where they went wrong.

He brings her only raspberries, which she blows anyway …

a real thurrpp and he is utterly, fiendishly charmed.

Do they care they are observed?

That when they kiss she can taste the port-wine –

the blood of Christ on his tongue.

Careful, she tells him, your lust is showing!

She in summer light slip, he in itchy –church clothes,

How changed the two are this day! … he so repentant, she so surely not.

So it is that when left to own devices, when all have turned away,

that the picture window becomes just another vacancy.

They make-love beneath the linden as it unlooses its spring flowers.

As the buds scent their skin, as they are kindred as they kiss,

as she tells him Again. Do it again.