Midnight Savior

Have you come
         to save me?
              Very well.

I’m teetering
between the earth
               and hell.
I’ll gladly take salvation
over pot and pills
and cheap red wine.
I’m grateful for your arms
but open up a little more
so that I need not love you
                    out of gratitude
but only for yourself.
Let me lie against your belly
inhaling all the night air
                          you let out.

Let me reach inside you
slow and easy, deliberate
so that your anatomy
will be my primer,
your sighs now heavy
my own northwest wind.
                            Let me probe
a secret place
no one else
          has so far touched.

Allow me this small favor
to pull you to me from the inside,
to live inside you half of every night.
       The star-filled half.

Don’t be discouraged
if I fumble or become inept.
I’ll try again,
               now slower still.

Then moving to your face
your eyes will dazzle me
as our mouths match,
the insides probing
one another’s insides.

Slide next to me. See,
no position is uncomfortable
                                  or wrong.

Such space there is between your back
and each new morning.
Such emptiness
my body and the sunlight
                 cannot fill.
I’ll try, I will.

Remember that you caught me
on the heels of what I thought
             was love.

from The Seas Around Me
Rod McKeun- 1976