The Sex Of Joy

People tend to call this my "sailing" poem. Most of my poems sail straight into the waste can, sometimes making a brief stopover at the canary cage. But his one has stuck with me for almost half a century now. It's posted in various places on the net. First appeared in print in LOON magazine in 1978:

BACK HOME

We sit crosslegged in the tub.

We’ve been three days sailing on the Sound

and are pleasantly exhausted.

I soap my face

and Joy begins shaving me.

It takes all the concentration

I can muster to keep from smiling

so she can shave around my lip.

Remembering the low swift boat

rolling over the waves

I watch Joy’s brown eyes as

they focus on the small swipes

that leave my face clean and smooth.

I keep my lips even,

but her smile rises and fades

with every pass of the blade.