You’d think Stanley Kunitz, near 70 and hobbling through “Touch Me” would have slid off my 19 year old self. But it was the only poem that stuck, from a night of literary luminaries.
15 years later, returning—not the first time since—and reassured again by the continuum: desire, desire. Tonight it’s the motor of the cat’s purring, drummers sounding from the arts center, and the thump of my hips against a circling hoop. Some tomorrow again there will be a beloved, a darling, do you remember—I’m sure of it. And in three decades time, desire still.
