I heart Tony Hoagland

Yesterday I bought this:




And I am in love with this:



Love

The middle-aged man
who cannot make love to his wife
with the erectile authority of yesteryear
must lower his head and suck her breasts
with the tenderness and acumen of Walt Whitman.

And if the woman has lost her breasts
to the surgeon and his silver knife,
she must hump the man's leg in the dark bedroom
like a rodeo bronco rider.

Let them be hard and wet again, respectively.
Let them convince, and be convinced.

It is the kind of heroic performance
that no one will ever mention.
It is the part of the journey where the staircase gets narrow
and you must turn sideways to pass.

Over the earth the clouds mutate and roll.
The trees catch their breaths for another try.
Wind rips through the dried-out grass
with a threshing sound.

The man going under the covers.
The woman letting him.
Both of them refusing
to be stopped by shame.

All that talk about love, and this
is what the word was pointing at.

His poem "Poor Britney Spears" was a close second.