Sharon Olds
TRUE LOVE
In the middle of the night, when we get up
after making love, we look at each other in
complete friendship, we know so fully
what the other has been doing. Bound to each other
like mountaineers coming down from a mountain,
bound with the tie of the delivery-room,
we wander down the hall to the bathroom, I can
hardly walk, I wobble through the granular
shadowless air, I know where you are
with my eyes closed, we are bound to each other
with huge invisible threads, our sexes muted exhausted, crushed, the whole
body of sex-surely this
is the most blessed time of my life,
our children asleep in their beds, each fate
like a vein of abiding mineral
not discovered yet. I sit
on the toilet in the night, you are somewhere in the room,
I open the window and snow has fallen in a
steep drift, against the pane, I
look up, into it,
a wall of cold crystals, silent
and glistening, I quietly call to you
and you come and hold my hand and say
I cannot see beyond it. I cannot see beyond it.
Location: New York, New York Books: Satan Says, The Dead and the Living, The Gold Cell, The Father, The Wellspring, and Blood, Tin, Straw Awards: New York State Poet Laureate from 1998-2000. Other: She teaches at NYU and helps run the NYU workshop at a state hospital for the severely physically challenged.
