The hurried autumn sun flows in,
collecting in small, concentrated
patches on the bed. Your skirt is
bunched around your waist. For modesty
you’ve spread your robe across your lap
-the one you got in San Francisco
Chinatown, the dark blue cotton one
with a dragon embroidered in white.

Each time you move, the robe rides up
showing me your thighs and panties.
I’m seeing more of you today than
I had bargained for. Your sweet secret
is a dark shadow through white cotton.
We talk about underwear, we talk
about our lovers, our hopes we hope
will not be beaten by the past.

This is a big Saturday; the sun
expands it, like breath in a balloon
my poetry books, your jazz records-
the ones you got when your stepfather
left-our collections of movie star
pictures, and stamps, they fill up the
afternoon like a grocery bag.
The day is about to burst open.

The pear you bite into is yellow
as the sun; the juice drips on your shirt.
You wipe your mouth off on your robe.
slivers of pear skin stick between
your teeth, making your grin as yellow
as a melon. At lunch you kept
pulling the tomato out of your
sandwich, taking the bread apart.

All afternoon you have been eating
messily, making love to your food.
soon you will have food smeared all over
your clothes.”It’s O.K.” you say “I have
to wash them anyway.” It’s such a
wonderful day. I am thirty years
old, and you are twenty-three, or
twenty-five, or possibly nineteen.

This is even better than a dream.
We feel as if we own the whole day,
the way a rich man owns real estate.
We are like a brother and sister
in a story for our children. Our life
together is like the pictures
in a book-not the story, but
the illustration for the story.

It’s funny how you remember
the pictures for years after you
have forgotten how the story goes.
This day will be one of our pictures,
a thing we will always remember,
no matter what else changes in us.
Today our world was filled with the sun.
Soon, we know, it will be filled with snow.