Difficulties of a Heavy Body

a sense of
his thirty-third year
takes
his elbow
 
*
 
any kind of
he says
sniff
must be allowed to mature
 
*
 
an accident leaves him
and finally
the swallows
 
*
 
by way of
curiosity he is no hand
by no means
to depict
a woman
 
*
 
often he knows
a crowded room
 
*
 
just out of
his mother
he falls between the pursuit
and a case he’d sooner forget
 
 
 
 
 
*
 
he has a
female muscle
camouflaged
for impact
 
*
 
streets enough
to welcome snow
 
*
 
he knowingly succumbs to the
brown sitzbaths
 
*
 
his wife touches
a foretaste so vivid that
the sheen of
timber upsets
 
*
 
in going
this sort of
persistence
 
*
 
difficulties of a
heavy body
placed in
alternating gestures

Copyright Credit: Rosmarie Waldrop, "Difficulties of a Heavy Body" from Another Language: Selected Poems. Copyright © 1997 by Rosmarie Waldrop.  Reprinted by permission of Rosmarie Waldrop.
Source: Another Language: Selected Poems (Talisman House Publishers, 1997)