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Love's Ways

Text of Poem

Almost as if you hungered to be free
of clothes you strip your pulsing body bare,
under your feet or pulled off overhead
you shed a husk of garments till you wear
corollas of velvet flesh and with your lips,
as warm as your avowals, pressed on mine
the cradle of my arms rocks you to bed.

Later you stretch and yawn and take a shower
hidden from sight behind the fuzzy glass,
shut in a cell where water clothes your skin,
you wrap a towel around you when you pass
across my sight to find the dress you want,
then distant as a nun in her retreat
construct a private mood I can’t come in.

First Line
Almost as if you hungered to be free
Original Pub Location
Original Publication Date
1967
Original Citation
A Single Focus. Iowa City: Prairie Press. 1967. 57.
Republication
Complete Poems
175
Hearst Collections
Word Count
116
Poetic Form
open
Bibliographic Notes

Page # in Scatter (is that a book?). Not in Ward.

Themes