like the finest wine I’ve never tasted—
perhaps the tang of a Montepulciano.
How the liquid looks full-bodied,
catches light as it breathes.
We stare as if into a still life,
watch our sommelier pour
the complex, expensive taste
on the edge of a dome-shaped glass.
O, to be admired like that—
desired for stable ankles, softening
bellies, healthy breasts.
Sixty-one and still here. At the party,
I meet a man with hair,
check his hands: perhaps mid-eighties?
But I see the earlier version
call me honey, carry my packages
from the car. What if
we could see the octogenarian,
as delicious as a Shiraz,
bold, buttery, rare;
perhaps in the body’s limitations
we might transform
into a tribe of small kindnesses—
our extended outlooks reconfigured
into art installation or tableaus
underneath cool sheets—
long fingers still entering
the bungalows of our bodies.
