“Beloved, I am un-gathered here…I touch and smell in the rough flesh…”—Bob Hicok, “Elegy’s”  

Like winter after fall, I follow you, Beloved.
Love, like satori, kicks you in the I.
Sex in the pm, coffee in the am.
Deciding who picks up which kid can feel like the U.N.,
where world class negotiators have gathered.
They’re from their homelands over there, but they’ve come here…  

You can’t spell “relationship” without “I” and “I.”
Your skin has much to teach me when we touch.
Our love binds us together the way the word “and”
joins the senses when we say “taste and smell
and see and hear and touch.” “Love I’m in,”
says Yoda after he meets a green gal and learns the
force that governs the stars, the winds, and the rough
waters is love, the touching of flesh by flesh…