Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing

I would like to see you cooking. I would like for you to cook for me

I would like to see you decide upon the menu, go to the market and

Pick the fruit, the vegetables, the fish. I would like to see

You smell the fish, test the flesh for freshness and firmness

I would like to watch you in the bakery, in the bakery by the

Dinner rolls, deciding rolls or crusty bread. I would like you

To run back to get the goat butter. I would like to be sitting

In a corner and you, intent upon your meal, not noticing me

When you go to get the wine. I would like to watch you wrestle

With red or white. White, of course, because it's fish, but red

Is seductive. Whoever fell in love over a glass of white wine?

I, uncharacteristically on time, would like you to greet me in a

Butcher's apron. I would like to watch you greet me only in an apron

You would ask me to undress, to undress for you. Before I sit down

At the beautiful table, before you hand me my glass, you would ask

Me to undress. I would like to watch you watch me undressing for you

I would like to watch the movement inside the apron as I undress

For you. I would like to watch you walk, no, stroll to your closet

Where you bring out your old buffalo plaid dressing gown, your pilly

Much-washed dressing gown that smells like you after you brush your

Teeth, after you shower, after you comb your hair. I would like to

Embrace your odor, your odor, your essence, as we sit down to eat

I would like for you to cook for me. I would like that very much

I exist in your imagination. I exist in your heart. I pop up in

Front of your windshield when you barely miss that little squirrel

I am laughing at you in the grocery store when you can't remember

What you need. I am singing to you when you are restless in

Your sleep. I am the sprite when you take your shower. I exist

In your fingertips when you touch your lips in surprise, when

You touch yourself in your dreams. Clearly unacknowledged

Certainly unappreciated, perhaps even unwanted, I nonetheless exist